We're counting down days until Baby Girl turns 2. It's a week away. I can't believe how fast time has gone. It has been so fun for me to see her transform from a baby to a little girl. Each new phase is so fun and cute. What amazes me is Baby Girl's vocabulary and ability to communicate. It is so nice to have her tell me what she wants, or what's wrong, or what she's looking at. It sure beats the ineffective guessing game we used to do. Everyday she says more words that I didn't realize she knew. When she drops something, or when something spills, she let's out a "Dang It!" or "Crap". Ooops. I guess those are better than the alternatives. The other day, we were putting our hands in the sprinklers outside and Baby Girl got soaking wet and she yelled out "Dang It!". Then she thought it was funny, so she repeated it about 417 times. Lovely. When did she get so big?

This was a silly picture that Baby Girl told me to take. Whenever she does something that she thinks is cute, she says "Camera. Picture" Then she smiles a cheesy smile. It was a pretty cute picture.

Messy - M-E-S-S-Y - Messy. Baby Girl is a little obsessed about messes. She likes to have things clean. She likes to put her toys away, before she starts playing with new toys. When I leave something on the counter, she tells me to put it back. Today she came and asked me for a rag so she could clean up some juice that spilled on the floor. At the beginning of the summer, she would have a massive melt down because there was dirt on her feet. Can we say OCD? So, with all of that, I love times when Baby Girl is completely filthy from head to toe, and loves it.

My favorite moments from days:

1. Baby Girl came up to me and gave me a hug and said "I Lub Du" without any prompting from me.
2. Sitting outside in the shade with friends, and BG on my lap singing "diamond, diamond, diamond, diamond" (her version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star")
3. BG and I were lazy today - we stayed in our pajamas until lunchtime! 
4. BG requesting to listen to Primary Music, then hearing her sing along to 'Ollo the Office' (Follow the Prophet) and "Long to Church" (I Belong to the Church)

Life is good, what can I say?

This week I spent the week with my Uncle Bill and Aunt Leslee who live in one of the most spectacular places in the world, Page, Arizona. I haven't been able to get down and see their new home (if you count 5 years as new) and the last time I visited, which was way too long ago, they lived in Phoenix and I still liked Transformers. Saturday my uncle and I went fishing between the Glen Canyon Dam and Lee's Ferry, a stretch of about 14 miles of crystal clear river and coral beaches. Sunday Morning my aunt and I took a short hike to Horseshoe bend, an overlook at the top of the canyon where the previous day my uncle and I were fishing.

We started Saturday's fishing by launching the boat at Lee's Ferry and going up river a few miles. Just below where we launched, the much smaller Paria River emptied into the Colorado and actually made it two-toned because of its red muddy water -- it looked like an alien pollutant was being introduced into the river. The previous week the Paria river flash flooded peaking at around 4000 cusecs (cubic feet per second) when entering the Colorado at Lee's Ferry, normally this river only flows at about 30-50 cusecs.

As far as fishing goes, it wasn't that great. I didn't catch anything and at about 10am the weather took a turn for the worst which, for a relatively inexperience fly fisherman like me, made it nearly impossible to fish; however, the fishing to me was only secondary compared to the amazing scenery and access we were able to gain in the canyon. Red sandstone cliffs rose straight up 1,100 feet on each side. Near the river, in the few places plants could take root, lush green vegetation flourished, it was simply awesome. The boat ride home was cold and wet, it was raining with wind blowing against us and I've never been happier to see shelter just to get out of the weather. As we came home up the "cut" we could see the cloud filled canyon which looked like a giant gash in the earth seething with hot vapor.

By Sunday the weather cleared out and it turned out to be a beautiful day. My Aunt took me on a short hike to a place called Horseshoe Overlook, which was a vista of a bend in the canyon shaped like a horseshoe. The soft morning light gave the view a little something special. Previous to our visit a man had gotten too close to the edge of this overlook and accidentally fell to his death, apparently he hit a ledge 600 feet down and didn't make it to the bottom. Ebenezer Bryce, a man which a nearby national park is named after, once said that this area was "one hell of a place to loose a cow" -- seems like this also applies to people.

It was a great time, and in the evenings I got to hear about the many adventurous river trips my Aunt and Uncle had taken throughout the world while eating world-class dinner -- my Uncle and Aunt are amazing cooks. It was truly a wonderful relaxing time and I enjoyed my time there very much. Hopefully we can make it down there again soon

I recently realized that summer is quickly coming to an end. And what have we done? Hmmm, good question. We haven't posted a blog for a couple of weeks. I would like to think that we've been so busy doing fun things that we haven't had time. Closer to the truth is, we haven't done anything too exciting to blog about. Honest truth: we recently got Netflix and are too lazy to blog. So, I need to document some of the fun things we are doing this summer - so in the bleak winter months with minimal sunlight, I can say that we actually appreciated our summer while it was here.

Our new hobby is biking. Morgan is biking 2-3 times a week with Scouts and friends. Baby Girl and I go on bike rides in the morning. And occasionally we make it for family bike rides along the river trail. It's fun, we're hoping that we can count it as a form of exercise.

Swimming is one of our favorite past times. We had friends over to go swimming in our pool for the 24th of July. This is a picture of Baby Girl at that gathering. She didn't like being sprayed with the water. She likes getting wet, but on her terms. We've also been taking a Parent/Tot swimming class. This is so fun and BG loves it! It's more fun this year than it was last year! BG is a champ at kicking her legs. And she loves jumping off the side into the pool. She loves swimming time! 

Our most commonly eaten meal is grilled hamburgers. I think that's what happens when you buy a 10 pound box of hamburger patties. It's been great because we've had several (planned and impromptu) barbeques. We start up our grill and cook up hamburgers for a crowd!  My favorite part is if Morgan is grilling, then I don't have to cook dinner! 

Overall, we are loving the warm weather. We LOVE having a yard (with grass!) This is the first summer in our house that we can actually enjoy our back yard. Our garden is growing. We've already harvested 3 zucchini! And more to come!

Here's a rather long video of Baby Girl showing off her vocabulary. This is proof that she really can say a TON of words, even though she won't say them when other people are around to hear her. She gets shy and won't say them around new people. Enjoy!

Here's our future Aggie! We're teaching her young to cheer for USU Aggies!

On Saturday, we had a Play Day with some of our friends! Michelle and I are friends from high school. Luckily, our husbands also became friends and have similar interests. So, we try to get together. It's a little harder now that we don't live in the same city, but it's not that far of a drive. We went to the zoo for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Just a few words of advice, don't go to the zoo in the afternoon in July. It was entirely too hot. We were all melting! It was fun though. Michelle has 3 boys (4, 2, 8 months) and Baby Girl enjoyed watching the boys. She likes to watch kids play, and doesn't play too closely with them! After the zoo, we had dinner together. We had delicious meatball subs. Then Dan and Morgan went fishing, while Baby Girl and I hung out with Michelle and her boys. I think Baby Girl liked being one of the boys. She loved playing with their cars. Michelle threw her boys in the bathtub, and Baby Girl wanted a bath too! It was pretty funny, so we gave her a bath. It was her first bath with a buddy. We didn't bring any pajamas with us, so Baby Girl borrowed some Transformer pajamas. She loved them. What a silly girl! On Sunday, after church, I was getting her out of her dress, and she wanted to wear her 'boy' clothes. So, she wore Transformer Pajamas all day Sunday too. We had a great time, and Baby Girl still talks about the boys that she played with. She can say all three of their names. We had a great time!

My child has hit the 'terrible twos'. She still has 2 more months until she's 2, but the full out tantrums are here. My only saving grace at this point, is that she seems to save her open defiance for when we are in the privacy of our own home. She's a quiet, sweet, obedient child when other people are here. I understand that it's a part of growing up. She's pushing her boundaries and experimenting with consequences ... I know, I know, I know. The most frequent battle we fight is changing her diaper and getting her dressed. She tells me when she's poopy and soggy. She holds my hand to go into her room to get changed. When I grab a clean diaper, she runs away from me and refuses to sit still for me to change her. She hates getting dressed. Yesterday, she had a massive melt down screaming at the top of her lungs: "nakey! nakey! nakey!" So, as long as I got her diaper on, she roamed around the house 'nakey'. So, with all of that, I've decided to embrace this and turn this power struggle into a potty training process. What am I thinking? I have no idea. So, after reading several articles about Potty Training, I've chosen a method that seems to fit our Baby Girl. Some specialists say, that letting the children run around 'nakey' from the waste down helps them with going potty. So, starting today, until she's trained or I give up, we will be spending the rest of the summer outside. Baby Girl will be partially or completely 'nakey'. The power struggles of changing her diaper will be limited to nap/bedtime.

We'll see if she's actually ready to be potty trained. According to the articles, she shows several signs of being ready. She has yet to pee on her potty though. However, she has peed on our lawn 4 times. We spent 3 hours outside this morning, and Baby Girl was loving her 'nakey' time. She ran freely. Luckily, we have a nice, secluded back yard with lots of shade and sunscreen to protect her precious cheeks! Wish me luck, I think I will need every ounce!

Our holiday weekend seemed to pass so quickly. For the last month, I would ask Morgan what we were going to do for the 4^th. Hmm. No decisions or even ideas. Then it was here, and we still didn’t have any plans. But that doesn't mean we didn't enjoy every moment of our holiday weekend. We seemed to do a lot, but only took pictures of one event.

Friday: Morgan worked, but Baby Girl and I had a Pool Party and Barbeque. We invited our Play Group friends. We had 4 kiddie pools and ate hot dogs. We had ten adults and 15 children under the age of 5. It was super crazy, but fun.

Saturday: Morgan went mountain biking with the Scouts. It's part of getting in shape for his huge bike ride next month. It's becoming one of his favorite new hobbies. I think it's great, and he loved it. Our city had a little festival in the park, so we went to see the booths. We quickly discovered that it was entirely too hot and way too many people to actually see the booths.

Sunday: We did our usual church thing that day. Our friends had a neighborhood barbeque that evening that we went to. It was fun to get together and eat great food. This is where Baby Girl was introduced to Sparklers. Morgan was holding BG, while she held the sparkler. I kept waiting for Morgan's hair to catch on fire. She kept waving her hand all around. We kept telling her to not touch it because it was hot, and I think it made her nervous. After her first Sparkler burned out, she wouldn't hold another one. She wanted me to hold it, not her.

Monday: We started our day entirely too early. We woke BG up early to go see the Hot Air Balloons that were in town for the city's festival. We were so sure that she would LOVE it. We rode our bikes to the field, and her eyes lit up when she saw all of the balloons. We got out and walked around all of the balloons as they were filling up, and she got a little scared. She had to be held. She acted tired, and didn't seem too interested in them. She was captivated by the pig balloon though. There was a bank that had a piggy bank, and she still talks about how huge it was. My favorite was the Coca Cola balloon, it was shaped like an old fashioned Coke bottle. There were probably 20 balloons that all filled up and took off. It was awesome. When they were in the air, we decided to head back home. Baby Girl did NOT want to go. She threw a massive fit. I think she enjoyed watching the balloons from a safer distance, and not when we were so close to them. On our way home, we stopped at a neighborhood breakfast. We have a really friendly neighborhood! Morgan went on another bike ride with a couple of his buddies, and BG and I came home to take a nap. BG slept for almost 3 hours. Monday evening, we had a couple of people over for a barbeque. It was fun to have people over.

We had a great, relaxing weekend with lots of food. But that's what having a holiday is about, right?

Every single day, I ask myself where my baby went. Honestly, my baby is a total toddler on her way to preschooler before I know it. She can communicate so well, and her vocabulary is increasing exponentially every day. She pulled out the word  'snake' today, and I don't ever remember teaching her snake. Her memory is incredible. She remembers EVERYTHING and talks about it for hours, days, weeks, or even months after the fact. Little things like when I bumped my head a month ago, she still talks about it. She's so funny. Her new thing is to tease us. She was holding one of her hair bows and I asked her what color it was. She said 'blue', and yes it was blue. I said my 'good job'. Then she held it up with a smile on her face and said 'purple'. And I said, "What? That's not purple!" And she just started giggling. So, I asked her again, "What color is it?" and with that same smile and look in her eye, she said "purple!" So, I laughed with her and told her she was teasing me. So, every now and then, she tells me something that is different than it is, giggles and says 'tease'. She kills me. Enjoy these few pictures from the last couple of days. Baby Girl loves to have her picture taken. When she's doing something that she thinks is cute, she points to the camera, gives a cheesy smile, and says 'picture' (which sounds a lot like pickle). All of these pictures were taken at her request.

I honestly feel like summer is finally here. We have temperatures in the high 90s this week. Wow, it's hot! We are trying to enjoy the warm weather while it is here. We've been doing a lot of yard work. I threw a Bridal Shower for one of my friends a couple of weeks ago, and we had it in our back yard. Which means: we needed to get the back yard cleaned up for the shower. We still have a lot of work to do, but it looks about 200% better than it did when we moved in. And our little garden is growing (minus the corn: the birds keep eating it). We're also grilling a lot more - which I love! That means Morgan does more of the cooking, and I get a little bit of a break! We tried grilling pizza - and we had great success. It cooks a lot faster than in the oven, and it doesn't heat up the house! 

We are starting to go biking. Well, Morgan works with the Young Men and Scouting, and for mutual they have been doing a lot of biking. They get to go on a High Adventure outing for a few days, and they have to go 50+ miles on their bikes. It's absolutely crazy. So, we got Morgan a better mountain bike for Father's Day. And we found a bike trailer to haul Baby Girl in. These things are expensive, and hard to find used. Luckily, we found a good deal on a used one and snatched it up before anyone else could. My favorite thing about this is that it can convert into a jogging stroller. Now, all I have to do, is pick up jogging! So, now we can go on family bike rides. There is a trail right by our house that is perfect for walking and biking. Maybe that will help us get in a little bit better shape.

We are loving being outside - in the shade when it's too hot. Yesterday, I gave BG a popsicle. She loves these. When we are inside, I usually hold them and give her bites. But we went outside, so I let her hold her own. I stripped off all her clothes, so I wouldn't have to worry about stains. BG says "nakey" when we take her clothes off. It's really cute. After she was done with her popsicle, I asked her if she wanted me to put clothes back on her, and she said "no, nakey". Alright then. Then we decided to blow up the kiddy pool and let BG play in the water. Brrrr, it was cold at first, but BG got used to it. She loved splashing in the water. She wouldn't sit down in the water though. I might be pretty mean, but I told her to go put her hair in the water. So, as any obedient child would do, she bent over upside down, and put the top of her head in the freezing water. She let out a huge gasp and popped her head up as fast as she could. Then cold water ran down her face and back. She did a little whiny cry, then started giggling and did it again! It was pretty entertaining.

Baby Girl and I had quite the adventure yesterday. We attend a weekly Play Group with other moms and kids in our ward. BG still hasn't figured out that she can play with the other kids. Oh well. Yesterday, our Play Group went to a local exhibit that had farm animals. They had goats, chickens, turkeys, cows, horses, pigs, and ducks. Baby Girl LOVED it, but she didn't like to get too close to the animals. But she enjoyed looking at all the animals. I think she had two favorites: the pigs and the ducks. The pigs were boring and just taking a nap in the shade, but she liked looking at them! Then they had a duck pond with lots of ducks and geese. We could hear the geese "honking", so BG tried to copy them. It was cute.

After we saw all the animals, we took the kids on a pony ride. Yes, that's right. What little kid would not want to go on a pony ride? My child would NOT. She was scared to death. I had to pry her out of my arms, just to get her to sit on the pony. Then she would cry and say "all done". I told her, "one more, then we can be all done." So, we made a little loop around the carousal a total of three times, before she just jumped off her pony into my arms. You can see from the picture the death grip she has on my arm. She never let go of me. It was probably a pretty traumatic experience. Afterwards, we had a picnic in the shade, and she forgot all about it. What a fun day with friends!

It kills me how fast Baby Girl is growing up. I have mini panic attacks when she throws a massive tantrum and I realize that she's entering her 'terrible two' phase (even though she still has 3 months until she's 2). On the other hand, it is so much fun watching her grow into a little girl. Her vocabulary is HUGE. She repeats EVERYTHING I say. Yesterday, in the car, I yelled "green arrow" to the car in front of me - who didn't realize that the light had just turned green. Sure enough, BG yelled 'green arrow' just like me. Luckily, it wasn't anything profane.

Yesterday, we were hanging out on the couch. Baby Girl wanted to play her 'small' guitar. It's actually a ukulele, but she just calls it 'small'. Then she points to Morgan's guitar and says 'big'. She was sitting there, strumming the strings and singing her songs. It was so cute. It looks like she's actually playing chords. What a smart girl.

Yes, our child has 2 binkies in her mouth in this picture. I thought I boxed up all of her binkies months ago. She never really took a binky when she was a baby. Evidently, there were 2 binkies left in the bottom of her toy basket that she found the other day. Sometimes, she's not a genius baby - because you don't really need to have 2 binkies in your mouth at the same time. It made for a cute picture, anyway. Baby Girl has learned the number 2. Well, sort of. She can recognize the number 2, and say 'two', and she tries to hold up two fingers (but she actually holds up eight fingers). But whenever there is more than one of anything - she says there are two of them. Sometimes she's right, and there are only two. Sometimes, there are seventeen, but she says 'two!'. We're working on it!

She's getting pretty good with opposites too. I'm pretty impressed with the opposite words that she knows. Her new favorite word seems to be 'NO'. (yes, we've entered that phase). Whenever we tell her 'no', she always finds something that she can say 'yes' to. For example, she always tries to open our cupboard in our kitchen with cleaners and chemicals. We always say No, No, No. Then she points to the other cupboard and says "yes". She also knows 'on' and 'off'. She's great about using them especially with her shoes. She knows 'hot' and 'cold'. She also loves to say 'hello' and 'bye' - especially when she's talking on her phones. About a month ago, she learned 'huge'. So everything was either 'huge' or 'small'. Since then, we've taught her 'big'. So, now when she sees things, they are either 'big', 'huge', or 'small'. She eats her eggs for breakfast according to size. As she eats them, she has to tell me whether it is 'small', 'big' or 'huge'. She also can say 'open' and 'up', but she hasn't learned the opposite words for them yet. She's such a cutie!

Last weekend a good friend of mine was married in Salt Lake City and we were fortunate enough to be invited. Mike is from Wisconsin living in Texas just recently returning from Iraq; his lovely bride, Nadia, is from Peru and graduated from BYU. The evening before the wedding they had an informal get together in the Sugar House area. Baby Girl made quick friends with a girl slightly older than her at the party, she simply called her "guul" and would follow her all around. It gave Jen and I some time to mingle and eat the great Peruvian food. Nadia's brother prepared the feast, he even made Ceviche -- raw fish marinated in lime juice. It almost burned a hole in Jen's tongue; however, I thought it was great.

Nadia's family didn't speak much English, or at least very little, and because of the little bit I picked up in Mexico I started up a conversation with her father. I realized very quickly two things -- my Spanish is VERY rusty, and I can't understand Peruvian's very well, or at least they don't speak like Mexicans (which could be a good thing). After a a few minutes however, it got much easier and we had a great time talking.

Saturday morning was the wedding ceremony, you could not have asked for a better day. Jen and I enjoyed spending time outside of Temple Square while we were waiting for the reception to start. The reception was held on the 9th floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial building, and was very high class. The reception was catered and they even prepared special kids meals for the young one's. Baby Girl especially liked the smiley face French fries. Jen and I had Chicken Parmesan -- it was delicious.

At the reception, I realized how lucky I am to know Mike. He is a great friend, an Eagle Scout, a missionary, a teacher, a graduate, a solder, a leader, and a husband to his great wife. I find myself very fortunate to be associated with such a great man. Congrats Mike and I wish you the best in your marriage

I think the video says it all. We have a genius! Especially since I recently read this: "Three-year-olds are beginning to learn colors. They can usually point to a color when asked and may be able to name four or more by midyear." THREE YEAR OLDS! Baby Girl is almost 21 months! 

p.s. Doesn't her hair look cute in a pony tail?

Here is our Top Ten List. This is the highlight of Memorial Day Weekend 2010.

10. Morgan's Stats Page. As you can see from the previous post, my husband is a genius (borderline geek). He got very excited about finding out all of the information from our blog. It was good for him to review his skills. All weekend I would hear Morgan hollering from the other room "Guess how many visitors we had on our blog on December 27, 2009." or "2.23! That's the average number of visitors per hour!" Anyway, needless to say, that was a highlight of our weekend.

9. My Sister's Birthday Party. We traveled to my dad's house on Sunday for my sister's 18th birthday shin-dig. Baby Girl's favorite part of the party was the balloons. She LOVED playing with them. BG had a massive panic attack when anyone got too close to her. She needs to grow out of that. Overall, we had a fun time eating food and playing games.

8. Walking to the Duck Pond. Monday was a gorgeous day. It was so warm and lovely. We went for a walk to a local duck pond. We brought Cheerios to feed the ducks (we didn't have bread). It was a beautiful walk. We loved spending time together. Baby Girl was so excited. She was warming up her throwing arm the entire way there. There were only 4 ducks in the pond when we got there, and they were swimming in a pond of floating bread. It was kinda gross, and they didn't eat our Cheerios. Baby Girl didn't even care that the ducks were no where near the Cheerios she was throwing. She loved it anyway.

7. Little Pink Tutu. Baby Girl rediscovered her tutu. After reading a tutu book with Grandma Kristy, BG loves her own tutu! She wore for a good portion of Monday afternoon. Every 5 minutes or so, Baby Girl would look down and smile and say "tutu". She loved it! 

6. Country Fried Steak. Every time Morgan and I eat out, I often order a Country Fried Steak. It's like my safety. When I don't know what to order, that's what I get. On Saturday, we made our own and it was so delicious. And so much cheaper than eating out. We made enough for all three of us to eat the meal twice for about $5. You can't beat that! 

5. Bird Feeder. A week or two ago, we got a bird feeder to put out our kitchen window. I love it. We sit at our kitchen table and can see all the birds eating the seeds. I'll have Morgan post a blog about all the different kinds of birds we have seen. The birds are pigs. It takes about a day and a half for the birds to empty our feeder. Its crazy. BG LOVES to watch the birds. She gets so excited when she sees them. It's cute.

4. Clean House. Monday morning, we cleaned our house. I love having a clean house. We even tackled our laundry room. This is a catch all room. We usually just pile stuff on our dryer when we don't know what to do with it. We cleaned it all off and I love it! It makes me happy every time I see our washer and dryer = because I can actually see them!

3. Our Garden is Starting to Grow. We decided to attempt a garden this year. It might be experimental. We don't know much about gardening, but we're going to try. This weekend, we noticed that we have onions and carrots that are starting to grow! Yay!

2. Baby Girl stayed in Nursery THE WHOLE TIME! Hallelujah! She has struggled for a while, and we weren't sure what we were going to do with her. They called a brand new nursery leader, and Baby Girl just attached herself to her. It was fantastic. Morgan was able to go to his Young Men's Class and I was able to do Sharing Time! It's a miracle!

1. Together as a Family. We just loved being together and being lazy. We slept in every day. Even BG let us sleep in. It was fantastic. We played together. We ate together. We loved it! We wish we could have a 3-day-weekend every week.

Have you ever wondered how many comments you have made? Or how many people actually visit the Frame Family Blog? Well the answer to these burning questions and many more are now available on the Frame Family Blog statics page (there is also a link now on the left hand side of this blog). It gives you insight into who posts more blogs (Jen or Morgan), and which day of the week people are most likely to comment. It shows historical "Crazy Days", where the most visits/hr and comments/day were made. So if you're a data nut you can check out his page to satisfy your statistical needs.

I would like to give a shout out to my buddy Dan as he gave me the motivation to produce this reports page. We got to talking about SQL and how Dan is starting to learn it for his job, and if you know me I get really excited when it comes to SQL queries. After talking about this I realized that I don't use it on a regular basis and I'm starting to forget a lot of it. So I started to make some reporting queries to brush up on my SQL which resulted in this statics page. So enjoy this page and thanks Dan!

PS Please comment on this blog as on average Jen has 1.6 comments per blog post, while I olny have 1.2

We set a new weather record yesterday. It's not something I'm proud of, or excited about. It was a record for the latest recorded date of accumulated snow. Yes, it snowed on May 24th. ACCUMULATED snow! Luckily, it didn't last all day. Actually by afternoon, it was quite pleasant. I didn't have to go out in the snow, but I hated watching it from my window. But the saddest part was watching my big, tall, tulips collapse under the snow. You can see in the picture - all the tulips are tipped over. And our garden on the left - covered in snow. I checked this morning, and my tulips are still tipped over. I don't know if they will recover. So sad. Blasted snow in the end of May!

So, since I didn't want to go anywhere in the snow, Baby Girl and I needed something to do. So, I made some play dough. Introducing Baby Girl to play dough has been on my to-do list for a while now, and I haven't gotten around to it. I have several recipes for homemade play dough. I chose to make the one that had the fewest ingredients, and no cooking required. The recipe is: 4 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 3/4 cup warm water. Just mix and knead it together till it feels like play dough. Baby Girl seemed to love it. I let her stand on the chairs at our kitchen table. I broke out my cookie cutters (yes, they are Christmas cutters, but it was snowing - so who cares!). I showed her how to roll the dough into a worm shape. We used a rolling pin to flatten the dough. It was a fun way to kill time and forget about the wintery wonderland that was outside!

So I've got to add a little to Jen's post. It's funny how events affect each other, even from many, many, many miles away. The winter wonderland Jen experienced here had an affect that almost drove me crazy, while at home it looked like

Looks glamorous right? WRONG! I was cooped up for four hours wishing I could break free from my airport prison. Four hours of sitting with angry strangers, four hours seeing how many times I could get through the security checkpoint, four hours of those cheesy airport announcements, four hours of...well I think you get the picture. So here is an addendum to Jen's post, and my new found respect for the butterfly effect.

At church on Sunday, our stake 'dry-councilman' was speaking. He started out by saying that religion is to "comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted." For the most part, I always believed that having faith in God and following His commandments brought peace to your life. And it does. But there is a whole other aspect to this too.  My already 'comforted' life is about to become 'afflicted'! I got a new calling (responsibility, role, job) in my ward on Sunday. I'm the new Primary President. I know very little about the calling, except for the fact that its a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice. I am so excited to work with the children. I have missed teaching, so this will be fantastic! But I need to learn about all the other responsibilities too. My first Sunday in, I already had several meetings. After church, we normally get Baby Girl fed then down for a nap. I had to stay for a few meetings and Morgan's job was to attend to Baby Girl. He does great with her, but a lot of times BG doesn't go to sleep when Morgan puts her down. She throws a fit because I'm not there to do it. Well, about an hour after church is over, my meetings are finished, I come home to see Baby Girl sleeping in Morgan's arms. WHAT??!!  Baby Girl NEVER does this. It was a miracle when she did this on our vacation a couple weeks ago. I was shocked! I chalk it up to a blessing from God. Honestly, if I'm having to go to meetings and fulfill other responsibilities, then my family will be blessed for it. And this is one evidence of the blessings from Heaven! Now, if we can just get Baby Girl to stay in nursery. She did fantastic for the first month. Then she went a month of missing nursery (conferences, sickness, out of town) and now she won't go back. She's fine to play in there if Morgan or I are there with her, but we leave and she has a melt down. We're talking crying so hard she starts shaking. She never lasts longer than 3-5 minutes before the nursery leaders have to bring her to us. Wish us luck, we're going to need it!

The past couple days have been gorgeous! I love the summer weather. Baby Girl and I have tried to spend as much time outside as we possibly can! It feels so good to be outdoors! Our yard is starting to come together. This summer, we actually have grass. All the trees have leaves, and its beautiful. Our backyard feels really secluded and I've enjoyed spending time there. We even have flowers! I planted bulbs last fall, and they grew! Shocker! We had excellent soil by our garage, and the tulips are huge! They are as tall as Baby Girl, it's beautiful.

We finally got our garden started this year. We don't really know how to garden, so this year will be an experiment. We got a space all cleared out. Baby Girl was such a big helper. She picked up rocks and threw them in a pile. This was fantastic, because it kept her occupied and it was actually helping! She would hold up bigger rocks and say "huge". My reply: "yep, that's a huge rock." Then she would pick up smaller rocks and say "baby". My reply: "yep, that's a baby rock." Occasionally, she would hold a 'baby' rock up to her cheek and rock it back and forth and try to pat it on the back, like she does with her babies. What a silly child. She also helped us plant the seeds for the garden. She planted most of the seeds. I would dig a hole, then she would throw a seed into the hole.

This morning, the weather was gorgeous! I was reading a book to Baby Girl where the characters were having a sleep over in a tent in their backyard. It sounded like fun, so we went to our backyard and pulled out our tent and set it up! Baby Girl thought it was the coolest thing ever. We have a little tent, that we've never used. We might as well get some use out of it. We spent the majority of the day in our tent. It was so much fun! Baby Girl loved the 'tett'. We'll have to play with it more as the summer goes on.

We survived our first major vacation with a toddler. Last week, we went on a vacation with Morgan’s parents and his little sister. They were kind enough to bring us along on a trip to Ohio. Almost everyone’s reaction to that is: Why in the world would you go to Ohio? Good question. First of all, we went to see the church history sites in Kirtland and Hiram, Ohio. Second of all, we went to Ohio because that’s where I served my mission. Makes a little more sense, right? We left last Monday and got back Saturday. It was a long, but wonderful, week. You can click HERE to see the photos of our vacation.

We had a fantastic vacation! Thank you Dave, Lisa and Ali for the great trip!

This post is a week late, but last Friday our Family entered into a Pinewood Derby contest. I did what I've always wanted to do when I was little but never had the time to do. It seemed like when you are little you only start to work on your car the day before the race, and then Dad ends up finishing it for you. So I broke out the tools, graphite lube, sandpaper, paint, and electronics -- yes I said electronics! The thing that I've always wanted to do with a pinewood derby car is give it real LED headlights and taillights. I built a small circuit with two resistors and 5 LED's consisting of two small red, two small green, and one large blue/red flashing for the police siren. Thanks to Baby Girl, by the way, for sacrificing one of her Easter toys to the cause. All the electronics were housed in the bottom of the car with a slip cover to keep all the guts intact during racing.

When it came down to race day our car was really light because it was hallowed out to accommodate the electronics. With a few fishing sinkers though we got her up to the proper weight. 3 cars raced at the same time, and to account for any inconsistencies in the track the cars were raced 3 times, once on each track (left, middle, and right) and the times averaged out. After everyone raced our car ended up in 7th place overall so we didn't end up winning any race prizes; however, we did walk away with the "most realistic car" prize.

So here's a post to our family Pinewood Derby contest and a lot of fun that we had building it -- even if it meant almost losing a finger!

This will be a random post. I don't think any of the pictures relate to each other, other than they are centered around Baby Girl (shocker, I know). First picture, Baby Girl applying deodorant. I'll admit that she is growing up really fast, but she hasn't hit that stage in life yet where she needs to wear deodorant. She is fantastic at being a copy cat. She copies EVERYTHING we do and say. Needless to say, I left the deodorant within her reach one day and she decided to copy me. It always amazes me how observant she is. She notices things and remembers things that surprise me. The other day we walked past a pop machine and she pointed to it and said 'coke'. For real? How does she know that? We don't drink Coke. A couple of days ago, she started saying a new word that is secretly my favorite to hear! I smile everytime she says it. She learned months and months ago to say 'up' when she wants to be held. Now she's started saying 'hold you'. It is so cute! 

Now for picture 2: my toddler looking like a teenager. Everything is there: her adorable off-the shoulder style of shirt, her headphones on her ears, her mouth hanging open and the blank stare on her face. I just thought this was a cute picture. We got new headphones today in the mail, so we were playing around with them. She surprisingly kept this style of headphones on. We recently purchased a portable DVD player. We hope to use it on future family vacations and long car rides to keep our child from driving us crazy! We decided to see if she would watch her Elmo movies with headphones on, so we don't have to listen to Elmo for the entire drive. We'll have to see if it will work!

Now for the final random video. We're pleased to announce that Baby Girl is currently learning another musical instrument. She's mastering the piano. Morgan is teaching her the guitar. And she has self-taught herself how to play the glockenspiel. Yes, that's right. She's a genius! She got this glockenspiel as a birthday present from Morgan's Aunt Christine (and family). She loved it immediately. Since then, she has practiced and practiced. Here's her debut performance:

Luckily, you have a volume control. In real life it is REALLY REALLY loud. And she loves to play when we are trying to have a conversation. It's rather cute to see how much she enjoys playing though!

We had another play date with some friends this week. My friend Britney, who I used to teach 3rd grade with, met us in Salt Lake. Her daughter (Baby H) is about a month older than Baby Girl (Baby G). We've had several play dates together, and its more for the moms than for the girls. They don't really play with each other. We decided to try playing at Red Butte Gardens. It was gorgeous weather - AND Morgan's brother, Dana, works there. He was going to hook us up! Unfortunately, it was crowded. There were tons and tons of angry people waiting in line to buy concert tickets. Dana was super busy, and there was a massive line to get into the gardens. Fortunately, Britney and I found each other, and got into the gardens with no waiting and no problems! (Thank you Dana!)

There were a lot of pretty flowers. We played in the Children's Garden for a while. Baby G loved the little chairs made out of wood logs. Then we had a picnic in the shade. It was great! We wandered around the pretty gardens for a while. We saw some ducks swimming by the waterfall. We saw some geese swimming with some giant goldfish. We bought some fish food to feed the fish, but the geese wouldn't let the fish get any. Baby G loved throwing the little pellets. When I wasn't looking, she slipped one of them in her mouth.  Gross.

I think Baby G's favorite part of the day was playing with Baby H's stroller. And Baby H loved playing with our stroller. Isn't that a silly thing? So, we switched for part of it. I pushed around Baby H, while Britney pushed Baby G. Such a simple thing, but they loved it! 

We had a great play date, and look forward to our future ones! 

I'll apologize, in advance, to the few of you that read this blog. I know that this blog is turning into a tribute to how smart our child is. But we're first time parents, and our child is actually a genius! She loves to play the piano. Recently, she loves playing songs from the Children's Songbook. She turns the pages and plays the different songs. She's learned to identify a few of the songs by the pictures on the pages. So, if she wants to play "Do As I'm Doing", she starts rolling her arms - to let me know that I need to find the page with that song. I can't fool her, she knows if its that page or not. She also touches her shoulders for "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes". She does the popcorn action for "Popcorn Popping". She claps her hands for "If You're Happy and You Know It". Well, yesterday, she surprised me with a new one. She was turning the pages and found a new song and said "hello" and pointed to the picture. I didn't know she knew how to say 'hello'! And sure enough, she was pointing to the "Hello Song". All day yesterday, she was playing and singing the hello song. I actually got it on video! It's hard to understand, unless you know she is saying "hello". So listen for it! 

We got a second chance at celebrating Easter, which I am grateful for since we were sick. Last Saturday, Morgan's grandparents had their annual Frame Family Easter Party. I'm glad it was the weekend after, so we could recover from our illness and enjoy the family. And the weather was a lot better than the snowy Easter we had this year. We told Baby Girl that we were on our way to see grandma and grandpa. That was a slight mistake on our parts, because we had to drive a good half hour to get to the party. So for the entire 30 minutes, she would say "maama", then she would say "baapa". We would reply: "Yep, we're going to go see Grandma. And Grandpa". Replay this tiny conversation for 30 minutes straight and it gets a little annoying. Needless to say she was pretty excited to see her grandparents. She was shy for a good 10 minutes, then was just fine with our new surroundings. She even was big enough to eat lunch at the little kids table this year. She loved her own size chair.

Another favorite part of going to Grandpa Frame's house is his chicken coupe. He has a bunch of chickens, and this year he even had baby chicks. Baby Girl loved going to see the chickens. She even pet some of the baby chicks. Today (3 days later) she was asking me where the chickens were. Silly girl.

After lunch, it was time for the annual Easter Egg Hunt. She was a lot more able to get the eggs this year, compared to last year! We still had to find the eggs and point them out to her. If the egg was hidden in the branches, she was too afraid of the bush to grab it. Even if it was on the long grass, she didn't want to pick it up. But she loved to shake the eggs and find the candy that was hidden inside. After it was all over she was wanting to find "one more".

After the Easter Egg Hunt, we even had a piñata! Baby Girl was even given the chance to break it. Probably not the smartest thing giving a 19 month old baby a bat that weighs half as much as she does! The piñata was too tall, so I had to lift her up so she could hit it. I was afraid she was going to smack me in the face with a baseball bat. Luckily it was heavy enough, she couldn't quite swing it very hard. She loved being apart of it though. She cried when her turn was up. None of the great-grandkids were able to break it, so they finally turned the bat over to Morgan's cousin, Max, to demolish it. You can see the video here.

Another successful Frame Family Easter Party to go down in history! 

Baby Girl is entering the phase where she is getting really good at copying the words that we say - and she still remembers them weeks later. She is always surprising me with what words she knows. I think her vocabulary has tripled in the last month. We were looking at the junk mail ads the other day, and Baby Girl points to the ad and says "car" and I look at the ad and sure enough its a car! So I ask her again what it was (just to make sure), and yep, its a car. When did she learn that word?! I don't remember teaching it to her, but I must have said it enough for her to know. That happens to be the case with a few other words that are now a regular part of her vocabulary. I didn't teach them to her, but obviously I said them around her enough for her to learn what they were!

Example A: Booger and Booger Ball (the little suction ball to extract the boogers). She knows what both are and can say both of them. Especially since she's been sick, we've seen a lot of both of these items. She likes to use the Booger Ball on her stuffed animals and dolls. I didn't realize that she knew this word until a few weeks ago, when we sat down for dinner to eat hamburgers. She asked "Dat? (what's that?)" and I said 'burgers'. Then she started pointing to (and inside) her nose. Then I realized that she thought I was saying boogers, instead of burgers. Lovely.

Example B: Burp. Not only does she say the word when she actually burps (and when other people burp), but she can pretend burp. She does a little cough/grunt noise that is her attempt at imitating a burp. I'm also trying to teach her to say 'excuse me' after she burps. She's trying to say it, it usually sounds more like 'amen', but at least she's trying.

Example C: Poop. This word originated a couple of weeks ago. We were looking out the window at this random dog wandering the streets. I didn't know whose dog it was, and it didn't have an owner or a leash. Nevertheless, Baby Girl LOVES looking at dogs. She points and giggles and says 'doggie'. This dog decides to stop and poop on our neighbor's lawn. So I say "What is that dog doing pooping on the grass?" Then magically, Baby Girl says "poop" and "doggie". Ooops. As the dog continues on down the street and out of our view, she continues to ask "poop" and "doggie"? Then the next day, comes the same words from Baby Girl "poop doggie"? Here it is, two weeks later, and she still wants to know where the doggie went that pooped. Now, several times in the last week, she's come running up to me and says "poop" and points to her diaper. Sure enough, she has a poopy diaper. One time, she even looked at me and said 'poop', then started to poop.

I'm sure this is only the beginning. Luckily, these words aren't as bad as other words! We just need to be careful about what we say around her now!

This year we had a very uneventful Easter. It snuck up on us without warning, and passed very quietly. It was kind of nice. About a week ago, Baby Girl developed an awful cough. The next day, I started feeling achy. Oh no. Yuck. It's bad enough having a sick baby, but it's even worse when I am sick too. Three days into the sickness, I take Baby Girl to the doctor - hoping she could get an anti-biotic that would make her magically get better. Of course not. Diagnosis: some viral bug. I'll be sick for a week and Baby Girl will be sick for 2-3 weeks. What? That day it goes from bad to worse. Baby Girl is coughing and crying miserably. I'm trying to focus through my haze and sinus pressure. Morgan comes home from work to a messy house, no dinner prepared, and both of his girl acting crabby and miserable.  This is how our weekend began. Luckily we didn't have any plans. We could stay home all weekend and try to recover. Morgan did a great job of taking care of us. He even got up with Baby Girl when her coughing woke her up in the middle of the night.

So, for Easter weekend, we spent at home watching General Conference. It was relaxing being able to be at home in our pajamas, listening to the messages. Between sessions on Saturday, we dyed Easter eggs. Baby Girl liked the purple and blue ones (those are the two colors she knows and can say). I thought she would have liked it more than she did, but she was pretty sick. And luckily the Easter Bunny still made a visit on Sunday - even though we were so sick! He brought Baby Girl a stuffed animal, sidewalk chalk and smarties. He brought Morgan a bag of peanut M&Ms. And he brought me some nighttime cold medicine! Yay! Thank Heavens for the Easter Bunny!

We are on the mend now. I am almost  better. Baby Girl still has a nasty cough and a lot of congestion, but she's a little happier than she was last weekend. Or maybe I'm just healthier and more patient with her now. And it looks like Morgan escaped the illness altogether. Now if it would stop snowing, we could start enjoying Spring!

As Morgan mentioned in the previous post, we had a family celebration to celebrate my grandmother's 80th birthday. She had all 8 of her kids there and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We had a Hawaiian-luau theme. We had leis, and there were palm trees and we had Hawaiian haystacks for lunch. It turned out great, and my aunts and uncles did a lot of work to pull it off. I think my grandma enjoyed herself. We played some games, and they had a little video with pictures from her life. What a great way to celebrate her birthday! Baby Girl did surprisingly well, considering the lack of sleep from the night before. She let new people hold her and she had a blast playing. In fact, I don't think I saw her for most of the party. She was off playing with family members. She was definitely the center of attention, as she is wherever we go. I guess that's the life of the first grandbaby - she is spoiled rotten. She has 3 sets of grandparents that spoil the snot out of her and shower her with attention. It gets a little out of control sometimes, but we're grateful for it! Here are some pictures in collage form. Sorry for the collages recently, but it's easier for me to post several pictures in a collage form. You can see my grandpa dressed for the luau! Also, there's my brother Skyler and his fiancé, Shayla (congratulations!).

And finally, one of Baby Girl's highlights of the weekend. This is what you get when you combine out-of-control first time grandparents + a good sale on something = constant giggles from an 18 month old girl! Check out our daughter rocking and rolling on her new toy!

I don't think it was built for dancing, but Baby Girl doesn't care! She loved pushing the buttons and dancing to the music that is played! Thanks for the great weekend!

This weekend we took a mini-vacation as Jen's Grandmother was having her 80th birthday party. We decided it would be fun to leave Friday evening, stay the night, and attend the party the following day. We booked a room earlier that week with a hotel and checked in Friday. As new parents and never having stayed in a hotel with an 18 month old child we learned a thing or two that will hopefully help us have better vacation experiences in the future. Our hope is that other first-time parents can learn from our mistakes and avoid the pit-falls that we discovered during our stay.

1. Don't keep your child up late thinking they will get exhausted and immediately go to sleep -- they don't.
2. Check air conditioning system before using. Right when we had gotten Baby Girl settled down in her pack-n-play, the noisy air conditioning system kicked on and woke her up brining us back to square one.
3. I learned from about 5 minutes of searching on Google, that sleep aids like Benadryl can actually have the opposite effect on babies. Socrates once said "True knowledge is knowing that you know nothing"; well, after giving my child coffee and cigarettes at 2:30 in the morning based upon my "opposite rule" of pharmaceutics, I realize that Socrates has a point.
4. Check with the hotel before hand and see if they can accommodate you in a room without as many neighbors. I would suggest a bottom floor at the very end of a hall next to a back entrance/exit. This eliminates one bottom neighbor, and a side neighbor, and if you revert to driving you child around until they fall asleep (like we did) your room will be close to the entrance. Unfortunately, this idea came to me as I was running up a flight of stairs to our second floor room located near the middle of the hotel with a car seat that contained a sleeping child.
5. Upgrade your hotel room to a suite with a second room if you can afford it. This will allow you to put your child down where they will not be able to stand up and see you.
6. Bring a roll of masking tape so that you can secure the drawers and cabinets in the hotel room.
7. Don't let your child sleep in the same bed as you. We did this and learned Baby Girl's nightly routine of sleeping involves a lot of kicking, rolling, and farting. Also, Jen and I didn't get much sleep as we were paranoid that any moving or loud breathing on our part would wake up Baby Girl.
8. Be aware of all your child's needs. The second day of the trip we were so focused on making sure Baby Girl got enough sleep that we weren't keeping track of how much water she was drinking. By dinner time that evening she was an absolute nightmare. We later realized that we probably didn't give her enough water, and, after getting her well hydrated she was a champ for the rest of the evening.
9. Pack Baby Tylenol.

After it was all said and done we really did have an enjoyable time. Baby girl got to play with Grandma and Grandpa, the highlight of her trip, and it was fun to see family and friends in the area.

Let me clarify, that Baby Girl is playing in this picture. She is having fun, I promise. What a silly girl. She loves to pretend to take naps. She loves to put her babies and stuffed animals down for a nap. Yesterday, she threw her plastic fork and spoon in her crib and said "nap", then she said 'sshhhh' to me, so I knew that her silverware was taking a nap. I had no idea that silverware needed naps too. I had a basket of clean laundry in our living room, and Baby Girl decided to start 'folding' it. I was in the kitchen getting dinner ready, so when I entered the living room there was a massive pile of clean laundry on the floor and Baby Girl was taking a 'nap' right on top of it. Of course, she never falls asleep. She lays there for about 1.3 seconds, then has to shift and move and be a busy body.

In addition to playing the piano, Baby Girl is also learning how to play the guitar. Morgan has been teaching her the past couple of days. Her first lesson was how to hold your fingers while you strum the guitar. He was teaching her how to pinch her finger and thumb together. And you can see in the picture that she's doing it! She loves to strum the guitar and play with Morgan. She gets excited and doesn't have much patience with it, but now when Morgan pulls out his guitar, Baby Girl thinks she entitled to play along with him.

Morgan and I decided that Baby Girl thinks that she's a grown up already and that she can, should, and will do everything that we do. Oh dear, I think we have our hands full with this one!

Chores for an 18 month old baby? Not unless they think they are playing! Baby Girl discovered our broom this week. What a silly child. It's so funny to see her copy us. She would sweep our living room and our kitchen. Then she would go to the garbage to pretend something away. Then return to sweeping. After dinner last night, Morgan was try to show her how you move the broom back and forth. He was telling her "back and forth, back and forth". Then Baby Girl decided to start saying "back and forth, back and forth". Well, she couldn't quite say those words, but she tried her best to copy the sounds and syllables. It was so cute. Now, if we can just get her to start doing the dishes, we'll be set! 

For Christmas this year, Morgan (and his parents) got me a sewing machine! I was super excited about this! Let's clarify - I don't know anything about sewing. Most people take a sewing class in middle school, which I did - but I must have signed up for the wrong class because we didn't use sewing machines. We sewed everything by hand. So, I knew NOTHING. I even had to have a friend come over and show me how to thread the bobbin. Yes, I'm pathetic. But I've learned a lot in the last 2 1/2 months. I've learned that patterns and fabric are expensive. But I've also found free patterns and tutorials online. And I also discovered that our local Deseret Industries sells grab bags of fabric for cheap! So, I've found a bunch of projects that I can work on (and practice sewing) for not very much money! Most of my projects have been toys for Baby Girl. I made a scrap quilt and pillow for her dolls. I made an I-Spy Bag, as a quiet church toy. I made a tutu so she can play dress-up. I made felt letters so she can practice the sounds of the letters. I made multi-colored bean bags to help her learn her colors. So far, she only knows purple, but that's okay. I've made a few other things that aren't pictured; for example: a crayon roll (a holder for a pad of paper and crayons), a tote bag, a diaper holder to put in her diaper bag, and a draw-string bag to hold her magnetic dress up doll. It is such a fun hobby that I am loving! I have several other things that are on my list to make! Yay for a new creative outlet!

We had a great St. Patty's Day. We both were dressed in green! Baby Girl wanted to wear 'purple', but she was put in green. 'Purple' is the only color she can say and identify, but I promised her that she could wear purple tomorrow. We went to the park and played with our Play Group. It was GORGEOUS weather. Baby Girl had a blast on the tunnel slide. It took a few minutes to coax her down the first time, but she had the hugest grin on her face. And her hair was standing on end from the static from the tunnel slide. She then had to go down it approximately 53 more times. What a silly child.

Then to honor the weird tradition of St. Patrick's Day, we had a green lunch. We had green noodles with green Alfredo sauce. It looked disgusting, but it tasted just fine. As you can see from the pictures, Baby Girl pulled a face, but she shoved food in by the fist full. We also ate green peas and green pistachio salad. We were going to do green eggs and ham for dinner, but we changed our mind. Maybe we'll try green eggs and ham another day.

I love being a mother. Each stage that Baby Girl enters is so much fun. She's always been fun. I really enjoyed the baby stage, but I think I am enjoying the toddler stage even more. She is so cute and funny. Her personality is developing every day. We get to do some fun things together. It makes me so grateful for how hard Morgan works to allow me to stay home with Baby Girl. So, this week, Baby Girl and I made a necklace with fruit loops. What a simple thing, but she thought it was the coolest thing. We sat on the floor in our living room with a string and a box of fruit loops. I opened the box and grabbed a handful of cereal, then turned the box towards Baby Girl for her to grab cereal from the box too. You would have thought I gave her the world, she thought this was the best. I showed her how I was looping the fruit loops onto the string and she released more sounds of wonderment. Her job was to reach in the box and hand me the cereal so I could string it. She would get really good for 4 or 5, then she started shoving them in her mouth and forgot all about her 'job'. When the necklace was complete, I showed her how to wear it and eat from it. She was in heaven. It was the cutest thing! I pulled out the camera to take a picture, and she, of course, gave me her cheesey smile. What a silly goose! I take for granted the simplest things. Leave it to Baby Girl to point out the excitement in the smallest of things. I love her for it!

This week, Baby Girl turned 18 months old. Holy Smokes, where did the time go? The most exciting milestone was her entrance to Nursery class at church. She's attended the last 2 weeks, and had no problems. Morgan even said that when he went to pick her up, she was reluctant to leave. Yay! What a relief! She went for her 18 month check up also. She's doing fantastic, however she's smart and huge for her age! She's in the 97% for her age and in the 75-90% for weight and head size. Her doctor said that most kids slow down and level out in their growth - but we're still waiting for Baby Girl to slow down. That's our girl! And she was so good for the doctor. She didn't cry while he was examining her. She even can say 'doctor'. When we talk to her about the doctor, she sticks out her tongue and points to her ears. She's remembering when he looked in her mouth and looked in her ears. She was showing off her vocabulary, and he seemed impressed when I reported that Baby Girl's vocabulary has reached to about 30 words! She did have to get one shot (which was sad), but now she's done until kindergarten. [Sidenote: I took this picture with a setting our camera. It looks like she's wearing make up, but she really isn't. I thought her eyes were beautiful in this.]

Baby Girl is still obsessed with letters. She knows probably close to 20 letters now. She can identify most of them on her own and tell me the sound they make. Wherever we go, she is constantly spotting letters. Whenever she leaves our house, she kneels down in our front yard and 'reads' the letters on the water meter. Then when I can pull her away from that, we go to the car and she sees the words on our garbage can. On a corner, by our house, there is a business sign that starts with 'm', and every time we drive by that I hear an enthusiastic 'mmmmmm' from the back seat. She is so smart. So, I decided if I could transfer her letter enthusiasm to her fascination with our keyboard. I labeled some of the keys with the names of that note. She loves it! Her favorite is A. She always plays that note first. I love seeing her little chubby fingers playing our piano.

We love our little girl and can't imagine life without her. She has brought so much joy into our lives!

I think Punxsutawney Phil was mistaken when he said that we were going to have 6 more weeks of winter, because we have gotten an early Spring for sure. It has been beautiful weather for the last couple of weeks. We've been going for walks, and given up on wearing our winter coats. Until last week, we got a big snow storm. We had big, huge snowflakes falling from the sky. On Friday, we had several inches of wet, heavy snow on the ground. By Friday afternoon, the sidewalks and roads were dry, and a lot of the snow was starting to melt. The sky was blue and the sun was shining! So, Baby Girl and I decided to go play in the snow! We made a snowman! Well, I made a snowman. Baby Girl tried to help by patting the side, but it generally was more harmful than helpful. She loved the snow. She just kept pointing and laughing at it. She loves to touch it - without her gloves on! Her poor little hands were so cold, but she didn't care. She was fascinated with the water that was coming out of our rain gutters. She made her way over there and was playing in the ice cold water. That's when I had to be a mean mom and bring her inside - kicking and screaming. Her poor fingers were bright red, but she just wanted to play in the freezing water. What a silly child! 

Anyway, this was our first and last snowman of the season. It's pretty much melted now. We have a small pile of snow on our green grass. We're excited for Spring! 

Baby Girl cracks me up. She has such a funny personality, I love it! Baby Girl has discovered her favorite blanket. She found it last summer, and luckily it's a small cotton blanket that I have 3 of - so I can easily pull a switch-a-roo, and she doesn't even notice. She likes to have the blanket by her face. She often will but it around her neck - kind of like a scarf. Today, she was doing this, and I helped her tie it around her shoulders like a cape. Oh my heavens, she thought this was the coolest thing ever. She walked around, looking down at her blanket-cape and just giggled to herself. She would walk over to the door, look back at me, wave, and say "bye-bye". Where did she think she was going? It was so cute. Then her blanket would come loose, and I would have to tie it into a cape again. Super Baby!! So, I grabbed my camera and told her to smile. As you can see in this picture, this is what she does when you ask her to smile! Such a cheesy face! Where does she learn things like this? She cracks me up!

We Love the weekends! We get to relax and spend time together at home. This is a picture of Morgan sharing his food with Baby Girl. She's learned that she goes to her dad for the good stuff. I always make her eat vegetables.

My most recent sewing project was letters for Baby Girl to play with. She loves making the sounds of all the letters. She knows more than half. It's so cute. She's so smart. So, here's a picture of me and Baby Girl hanging out, playing with the letters.

We love the weekends!

I had to share this adorable video of our Baby Girl. She's showing off her verbal vocabulary. Her new word today was 'snow'. Please pardon her mashed potatoes all over her face and hands. She just happened to cooperate with me while she was eating her lunch.

Also, this was an adorable picture that I took a couple days ago. It has been pretty warm the last week, so we've been spending time outside. Baby Girl tripped on the sidewalk and bonked her little head. She cried for a minute, but was just fine. But it left a nasty looking scratch and bump.

Today we had a snow storm. All day it snowed big beautiful snowflakes. Fortunately, the ground was warm enough that we didn't have any of it accumulate. Baby Girl and I were out walking in the snow and it was so fun to see her reaction to the 'nooooooo'. She kept trying to grab the massive snowflakes. She kept giggling and looking all around her at the snow. I had to stop and smile. She didn't even notice the cold or the fact that she was getting wet. I had to resist the urge to hustle her inside and let her enjoy the moment. So, instead I showed her how to stick out her tongue and try to catch the snowflakes with her mouth. It was adorable to see her dance in circles with her tongue hanging out! What a beautiful day!

What a wonderful Valentine weekend! We had a great weekend. I arranged a baby sitter for Friday night and told Morgan that he needed to plan a romantic date for us! I like to tease and pester Morgan about being romantic, but he always comes through and delivers. So, we put Baby Girl down for bed around 6:30 (yes, she goes to bed at 6:30 every night. I LOVE it!) and our babysitter came at 7:00. We got all dressed up for a night on the town without a baby! It was wonderful! Morgan took me to this very romantic little Italian restaurant. It's a locally owned place located in the Historic district in our city. Morgan made a reservation, and it's a good thing he did because the place was hopping. What a quaint little place! They even had live music. We sat down, got our menus and I was a little surprised because a lot of it was in Italian! All of the titles were in Italian, but luckily the descriptions were in English. Morgan ordered the 'Bucatini Con Salsa Rosata' and I ordered the 'Gamberi Con Slasa Besciamella'. I must admit that my dish was better than Morgan's. It was delicious food! For dessert we got a scoop of Gelato. It was a wonderful place and we were stuffed to the gills.

We had a great weekend together. On Saturday, we got a bunch of errands done and the house clean. Morgan even took Baby Girl on a little outing so I could have some alone time. It was fantastic! It's so cute to watch Morgan with Baby Girl.

Then to top off the Valentine weekend, Morgan gave me some beautiful red roses. They were a lovely surprise! I am definitely a lucky girl!

No appliances broke on Valentines; I think the curse is over.

Baby Girl got some magnetic letters and numbers for Christmas. She loves them! I put them in a little metal box. One day, I showed her an 'H' and told her that it said 'ha'. Well, the next day, she pulled out the 'H' and said 'ha'! I was shocked that she remembered. So I started showing her more letters and sounds, and she would remember. Then Morgan started teaching her some. She loves playing this 'game'! I think she wants to learn more, but she can't say all the sounds yet! Not too shabby for a 16 1/2 month old!

Yes, that's right. We have a Hula Dancer in our midst! She's such a funny girl! So our keyboard has prerecorded songs that you can play. Baby Girl loves this feature. We've recently discovered a song called "Aloha Oe". I taught her how to do a little hula dance, and she loves it! It's so cute! You can see her waving her arms and dancing in circles. Several times a day, she asks me for "bap" (help) at the keyboard, and I know she wants to hear "Aloha Oe"! What a silly child!

First of all, I am probably the one to blame for this, but Baby Girl has learned how to ask "Dat?" meaning "What's That?" All day, every day, she points to different things and asks "Dat?". Then I tell her: it's a sign, it's a butterfly, it's a light, it's a butterfly, it's a paper, it's a butterfly, it's a screw, it's a butterfly. It is cute, and I try to remind myself that repetition is how Baby Girl will learn but it is ALL DAY long. Everything she sees, even when she knows what it is, she has to ask me "Dat?". She points to things on every page in the books she reads... Dat? We went to the mall a couple days ago, and everything she saw in the windows, or the sky lights in the ceiling, or the tile floor .... Dat? Dat? Dat? Dat? Hopefully my patience doesn't run out before her questioning does! 

I took this picture yesterday afternoon. Baby Girl likes to take 'naps' with her stuffed animals. She never actually falls asleep, but she likes to pretend. She got all comfy on our couch and pulled her animals around her so she could watch a little Elmo. I put the blanket over them, and she was content to cuddle with her animals for a good 10 minutes. What a silly child. Of course, after the 10 minutes, she started jumping on the couch. While I was in the kitchen, I heard a loud thud on our living room floor. I go in to find Baby Girl - with her animals- on the floor. She had fallen off the couch. Ooops. She just looked up at me and said "Uh Oh." She didn't cry or anything. She actually wanted back up on the couch. What am I going to do with her?

I just had to share this cute picture of Baby Girl with pigtails. I've finally purchased some little elastics so I can put her hair in pigtails! She doesn't really like me to do it though. She's so cute with them! Her hair is really fine, so it doesn't stay in the pigtails very well.

I love how blue her eyes are in this picture! What a cutie!

I'm not sure where she learned it, but Baby Girl has started this phase of putting on her head - like a hat. She often covers her head with her blanket and loves to play peek-a-boo. She's starting covering her entire head with her blanket, then starts walking around - but she can't see where she's going because of her blanket. A couple weeks ago, she was playing with an empty ice cream bucket. She emptied all of the toys out of the bucket and put it on her head and started to walk around. She loves laundry day because she gets to play with the empty laundry baskets. Once again, they always go on her head and she starts to walk around. I took this short video of Baby Girl walking around with a laundry basket over her head. Except its so tall, it covers her whole body - not just her head. Where does she learn things like this?!

What a silly baby we have! Baby Girl got this scooter for her birthday several months ago. She loves playing with it. She still can't get on it by herself, so she needs help. She comes up to me and says her version of the word 'help' - but it sounds more like 'bap'. As she says that, she does the sign for 'help'. It's really cute. I thought that would be a more difficult sign for her to grasp the concept - but I showed it to her twice and she had it down. She asks for 'help' several times a day - all day long! It's really cute. So I help her sit on her little scooter. She likes to give her babies and stuffed animals a ride on her scooter. It's so cute. I help load the stuffed animal, and she goes backward a couple scoots (she hasn't figured out how to go forward). Then she's ready to give another baby or animal a ride on her scooter. She makes sure they all have a turn. It's so cute. Every day I think "When did she get so big?". Every day is a new adventure!

Our house has been in a little bit of disarray for the last couple weeks. We have started to remodel our kitchen. Nothing too major (yet). So far, we've painted our walls and cabinets. On Saturday, we put in a new counter top. I LOVE it! The next major project is a new floor - then we're done! We'll have to post pictures when it's all done. So, Saturday - while Morgan was hard at work replacing our counter top - our kitchen was a little bit of a disaster! We didn't have any water in our house, our old counter top was off, and we didn't have a kitchen sink. So - for lunch we ordered pizza. Baby Girl loved the pizza. She's had it before, but I've always cut up little pieces for her to eat. Finally, her four top teeth are getting big enough to help her bite food. So, she was able to eat pizza by the slice. She LOVED it. You can see how messy she is. She ended up eating 1 1/2 slices of pizza. What a silly girl. In the picture, you can see the green color that we painted our kitchen walls!

Here is yet another update on our little girl. She is already 16 months. I cannot believe how much personality our Baby Girl has. It's out of control sometimes! She is so big. She can reach door knobs and things off our kitchen counter. She has such a funny personality. She has started to shake her head 'no' if she's asked to do something she doesn't want to do. She throws tantrums on a daily basis. She runs away from us in stores (or church), and then laughs when we catch her. She has a great imagination. She always cooks us things in her kitchen and makes sure to feed it to her baby dolls. This picture was taken a couple days ago. We were switching the car seats from car to car, but brought it inside to be vacuumed out. Baby Girl thought it was the coolest thing ever! She loved to sit in it

Then this video was taken this morning. This is our morning ritual - after her morning nap, Baby Girl loves to jump on her bed. She gets all hyper and crazy in her crib. It's quite funny. So this is her jumping and running in her crib. It's a good thing she's caged up. Who knows what she'll do when she's in a regular bed.

As you may have read previously, we had our washing machine break on Christmas Eve. It's ironic because our refrigerator broke on Thanksgiving. We're keeping a close eye on other appliances for New Years. After dishing out a few hundred dollars to fix the fridge fiasco, we did not want to do the same for our washing machine. So the handy-man in Morgan came rising to the surface. He got his tools out and had the thing taken apart in no time at all.  With a little help from Google, he found out what was wrong, bought the replacement part, and had it put back together in no time! The part only cost $12 (it's a Christmas miracle!). The picture is of the broken piece.

For Baby Girl this week has been the Week O' Ornery. I can only assume she's teething, but that tooth hasn't broke the surface yet. She's whiny, clingy, ornery, snotty, and is not sleeping very well. Life has been a bit harder for little Miss Frame the last few days. She seems so old to be just getting her teeth. She's 15 months and she only has 5 teeth. It's about time! Hopefully, the teeth will help her chew things a little better. In the meantime, we'll just ride it out.

Last night for dinner, we had macaroni and cheese (yes, it was instant from a box) which happens to be Baby Girl's FAVORITE meal. She usually eats more than I do. After getting cheese up to her elbows, and from ear to ear, and all over her hair - we threw her in the tub. She loves bath time. She would stay in there and play forever if I let her. We had to get a picture of her mo-hawk. Her hair was getting too long to stand straight up. I love her blue eyes! 

This year we had our Frame family Christmas party a little earlier than in years past, but it was good none the less. My parents stopped by on the way up to drop off some gifts for Baby Girl, Jen and I. Baby Girl got a wonderful moving gear magnet set. They are gears that stick to the refrigerator via magnets and one of the gears has a battery in it and spins. You can configure the gears in different configurations and watch it come to life with the flick of a button. Daddy also loves to play with this toy. Grandma and Grandpa also got Baby Girl a wooden animal puzzle and a nice outfit.

After opening presents, we all headed up to Great Grandma Frame's house for our annual post-Christmas party. Jen made a wonderful Christmas tree cupcake cake with caramel as the trunk, it was absolutely delicious. All the cousins, aunts and uncles get together to eat, play the left-right game, visit, and open presents. The left-right game consists of everyone getting in a circle and grabbing a present. Aunt Christine reads a story that contains the words left and right in it. Whenever a right command is read we all pass our present to the right, whenever a left command is read we pass our present to the left until the entire story is done. Jen and I thought it would be so funny to wrap up a little book entitled Nursing The First Two Months, so we did. Well it ended up that a 6 year old boy got the book -- not so funny, I guess, as it was pretty inappropriate for a 6 year old boy. Jen ended up with a kids movie and I got a big afro wig. I was so excited about my gift I wore it home, click here to see -- Photoshop may have been used in the production of this image.

Afterwards we came home, put Baby Girl to bed and spent the rest of the night talking about how much we ate, and how we needed to get more exercise. Thinking about it for a while made us tired so we turned on the TV and just vegged out, a nice ending to a holiday weekend.

We had a wonderful and glorious Christmas. I love Christmas time, and I loved it even more having Baby Girl here to enjoy it with us. We told her all about Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus. She points to our nativity on the mantle when we ask her where the Baby Jesus is. That's about as far as her understanding goes. We also told her all about Santa - that she better be good, and not pout or cry, if she wants Santa to bring her a present. She didn't care and continued to cry and throw fits. Maybe next year she'll understand a little more. On Christmas Eve, before bed time, we let Baby Girl open up one present. She really got into opening the presents - she ripped open the paper. It was a pair of new pajamas, so she didn't care too much about the present. She just wanted to open all of the presents under the tree. We had to tell her no, that she had to wait till morning. We explained to her that Santa couldn't come if she was still awake. Her response: blank stare and eye rubbing. The good news was that she was in bed at 6:15 and slept for the next 13 hours. This gave Santa ample time to come, deliver and assemble Baby Girl's present. It's a good thing Santa has helpers, because this present took 2 hours to put together. I was so excited for Christmas morning.

I was up and ready to open presents at 6:00, but Baby Girl and Morgan were still sleeping away. So, I tried to go back to sleep and wait for my family to wake up. Baby Girl finally woke up at 7:15! The suspense was killing me. After a quick diaper change, and allowing Morgan to get the camera ready, we brought Baby Girl into our living room. She was a little excited and confused with she saw a brand spanking new kitchen for her to play with. She was super excited and ran half way to the kitchen - then just stopped dead in her tracks. I think she was trying to decide if it was okay for her to play with it. After a very little persuading, she ran the rest of the distance and starting playing with her kitchen. She LOVED it. She loves opening the cupboards and the oven. She has little pots, pans, dishes, silverware, and glasses that she plays with. After a few moments of sheer excitement, Baby Girl noticed all the presents under the tree and wanted to open them. So we opened presents. For the next 2 hours, Baby Girl could not be pulled away from her Christmas presents. She kept rotating through all of her new presents and squeals of excitement and joy could be heard the entire time.

We decided to spend Christmas at home, and not travel to any of our family's homes. I LOVED staying home. Our families all invited us, and they probably don't understand why we wouldn't want to spend the holiday with them, but it was so wonderful to stay in the comfort of our own house. Morgan cooked us a fantastic Christmas feast. We cooked a duck! Isn't that awesome? We've never had duck, and we thought it would be fun to try. So, Morgan prepared a wonderful feast of duck a la orange, rice pilaf and corn bread. It was a fun adventure. Honestly, duck is pretty good. I would probably prefer chicken or turkey, but it was pretty good!

After our Christmas feast and Christmas naps, we decided to go for a drive to get out of the house. We drove up a local canyon to see if there were any pretty views. We saw some frozen waterfalls that were really pretty. We also saw a Mama Moose and it's baby. They were just off the side of the road. We stopped the car and took a couple of pictures. You can't see the baby moose, because it was behind a couple of trees, but they were there just eating. It was really neat.

We came home and ate left overs for dinner and Baby Girl was in bed by 6:30. What a fantastic holiday. We LOVED every moment of it.

A new holiday tradition is making its way in the Frame family household. This year we had our washing machine go out on us Christmas Eve; Thanksgiving our refrigerator went out. Can you see the pattern? We just can't wait until the next holiday so we can replace/fix something else -- Oh well, I guess this is the dark-side of homeownership.

Christmas time is my most favorite holiday of all time. I LOVE Christmas, and everything about it. I usually begin my shopping during the summer months. I would get a gift here or there over several months. This year I started listening to Christmas music during October. It makes me happy. I anxiously wait for mid-November to put up my Christmas tree. There's something about Christmas lights that soothes my soul. We emptied our coat closet of all the gifts we had gotten for family and friends and had them wrapped and under our tree before Thanksgiving. I love gingerbread houses, nativity scenes and Christmas caroling. Every year it comes to an end too soon for me.

With Baby Girl, the Christmas season seems even more magical! I love seeing her eyes light up when we see Christmas trees or Santa Claus. She points to the reindeer and calls them 'doggie'. (we're working on it!) We listen and dance to Christmas music on a daily basis. We went to the mall and saw Santa Claus a couple of weeks ago. We kept a safe distance and just waved to him. I asked her where Santa was and she pointed right to him. I am so excited for Christmas morning when she sees what Santa has brought her, and she gets to open the presents we have gotten for her! Merry Christmas!

I think I am already getting cabin fever. We've only had snow for 3 days, and we've stayed home the last two days. Both Baby Girl and I go crazy in our house all day long. Yesterday I contemplated going somewhere - but then I saw my car covered in several inches of snow and immediately decided to stay home. So, we stayed in our nice warm house and tried to find things to keep us occupied. It was the last hour of the day before Morgan gets home from work - I've heard some moms call this the 'witching hour'. I'm usually trying to get dinner ready. Baby Girl is starting to get a little cranky. Yesterday, dinner was already put together - all I had to do was throw it in the oven. Baby Girl was a little cranky. Instead of watching the clock, we decided to make a fort in our living room. So we moved our Love Sac and recliner apart and added blankets and pillows. We added Baby Girl's babies and a couple of books - and we have ourselves a fort! Baby Girl thought it was the neatest thing. She just had this look on her face that she thought this was the coolest thing in the world. Then I got in the fort with her and she loved it! We read some books and pretended to take a nap and played with some of her toys. I sent a message to Morgan at work and told him that we had built a fort in our living room and asked him if he was jealous. He responded that he was so jealous that he left work early to come play in our fort with us! What a fun day!

I must say that having a toddler is a lot more entertaining than having a baby. Baby Girl is so imaginative in her play. It's so fun to watch her play. I wonder what she's thinking as she's playing. One of her new favorite games is to pretend to take a nap. Too bad she doesn't actually take a nap while she's playing! She has me lay a blanket down on the floor in our living room. Then she has her dolls or stuffed animals lay down next to her on the blanket. Then they take a nap. Sometimes I cover all of them up with another blanket. Baby Girl just says "nap". She usually needs a book to look at or something to play with because she gets bored while she's taking a nap. These pictures are of her taking a nap with her babies. I asked Baby Girl to give her baby a kiss - that is why she is licking the doll's face. She has a massive tongue! That is how she gives kisses! Very slobbery, but she loves to give them! She doesn't let new people (or family for that fact) hold her very often, but she'll usually will give them a kiss on the cheek to say good bye.

This year we had Thanksgiving at our house, it was nice not to go anywhere and a prepare our own feast -- something we've not done yet. Jen prepared an excellent meal of Turkey, Yams, Rolls, Mashed Potatoes, and Pie (pumpkin and cheesecake). I was in charge of the stuffing. Everything turned out wonderful, it was one of our most memorable Thanksgivings yet.

Afterwards we packed up the leftovers (another thing that we were super excited for) and put them in the refrigerator; however, we noticed that the fridge was warmer than usual. We thought it was because our oven was on all day long and was making it harder to cool foods. After a couple hours it still would not cool. Needless to say, our refrigerator was broken and many of our leftovers went to waste. We managed to borrow a few coolers from some neighbors and salvage some of our perishables, but it was just too late for the poor cheesecake -- I was devastated.

The rest of the afternoon was spent taking apart the refrigerator -- checking the temperature controls, cleaning out the vents, coils, and other dusty parts but nothing seemed to fix it. I even resorted to breaking out my multimeter and checking continuity of all switches, dials, and fans. There were a few things that I saw that looked like the problem but after fixing them the darn thing still would not work. Finally after a day and a half of troubleshooting we gave up and called a repair guy. Steve figured out what the problem was, and fixed it. It seemed we had a bad defroster timer and defroster coil. Anyway, we now have a nice working refrigerator and no longer need to haul ice out to coolers on our back porch -- what a time for our refrigerator to go out.

Baby Girl has developed a cough. Poor girl. We feel bad for her when we hear her coughing. She's better when she sits still and takes it easy - but apparently that's impossible for a 14 month old baby to do. She loves walking all over the place, but then she gets all huffy and puffy, then she starts coughing. So, I've been trying to entertain her and keep her still for most of the day. Impossible, I know! So we read books. We color pages. And we watch Elmo. I try to limit how much tv she watches, but the last day or two, we've been watching more. Baby Girl LOVES Elmo. She points to the tv, then points to her Elbow (her sign for Elmo). This video is Baby Girl's favorite of the day. We hope she gets feeling better.

Baby Girl is getting her Christmas wish a little early - her two front teeth. Actually, I'm pretty sure she didn't ask for it, but she's getting them. She is 14 months old and has only 2 bottom teeth - until this week. I've been a little excited for her to get more teeth. She's trying to eat all the same food that we eat - but can't quite chew it. Hopefully more teeth will come and that will make chewing a little easier for her.

Earlier this week, she was starting to get a little cranky. I felt her top gums and sure enough, I felt little poky bumps breaking through her gums. The next day she was just a little cranky and fussy. Then, the next day - she woke up at 3:00 in the morning just whining and moaning. I went in to check on her and she had a fever of 100 degrees. Poor thing. A little Tylenol, some Orajel, and a hug from Mom and Baby Girl was ready to go right back to bed. All day long, she was miserable. She had a slight fever all day. She was tired and miserable. She would just moan softly and whine a little. This is a picture from that day. She put a pillow on top of a folded blanket and laid down to read a book. She kept resting her head and just laying there. This is very unusual for Baby Girl - she rarely sits still for very long. She is always on the move. I put her in her high chair for lunch, and while I was getting lunch prepared - she fell asleep in her high chair. Poor thing. By the time Morgan got home from work, she was acting a lot more like her usual self. And she now has 2 teeth that have broken through the surface on top. As those grow in, hopefully she'll be able to chew a little easier. That way she'll have her two front teeth - just in time for Christmas.

Winamp loves Destiny's Childs Christmas Album

This is a video of our Baby Girl dancing. She loves to dance. Whenever music is played, she's dancing. We got this video a couple of days ago. She turned on some music from the keyboard and was dancing. The video gives you a nice shot of how well she can shake her bum to the music! I love how she sways from side to side. Now if we can just get her to stop dancing in the tub!

I feel like I need to post more blogs to make up for last month. I'll warn you now that this is a tribute to our baby! Baby Girl is not so much a baby anymore. She's now 14 months old. She is walking all over the place. She still falls down a lot, but she walks more than she crawls. I never realized how much of a process it is to learn how to walk. It takes a lot of practice. She is so smart. She has a large vocabulary (even though she can't talk). She understands a LOT of what we say. And she learns so much every day. I've been making a list of things that she knows, and I've had to add to it daily. How can she be so smart? She is learning and using several Sign Language signs. I could teach her more if I were fluent in Sign Language, but my knowledge is limited. These are the signs that she knows: More, Milk, All Done, Food, Water, Piano, Please, Thank You, Sleep, Diaper, Mom, Dad, Book, Baby, and Shoes.

She talks all the time. It's all baby talk, and very rarely understandable. However, she can say a couple of words. These are the words that she can say: no no no, nap, snack (actually it’s just ‘ack’), duck, Mom Mom Mom, Da Da Da, Doggie, Uh Oh!, and Ick (when something is gross).

She has other words for things, but it's not really identifiable. For example, her word for 'balloon' is 'la la la la'. She got a balloon from a nice cashier at the grocery store today. She LOVES balloons. Whenever she sees one she says "la la la la". This is a video of her with her balloon. You can hear her say "la la la la". Doesn't she look cute in her winter coat and hat?

She can also point to several parts of her body. She knows how to point to: ears, nose, mouth, teeth, tongue, fingers, toes, shoes, elbow, belly button, eyes, and hair.

She loves music. She bounces her legs and 'dances' when music in playing. It doesn't matter what music it is, commercial music or church organ, she rocks out to it. It's really cute. She also does actions to a couple of songs. She loves "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "The Wheels on the Bus" (especially the verse about when the doors open and shut), and "If You're Happy and You Know It". She learned all of these songs from Elmo. She LOVES Elmo.

She also can do gestures for other actions. She does signs (or gestures) for washing hands, choking, and 'I don't know'. She can hold up one finger when you ask her how old she is. She can fold her arms. She likes to rub Morgan's back - especially in church or when we read scriptures (he's trained her well). She can give kisses, hugs, and blow kisses. She also knows what a fish says (she opens and closes her mouth). She can also give 'high 5's'. She loves this.

Her newest trick is something that Morgan taught her. It seemed genius yesterday. Today it's not so smart. He taught her to "throw this in the garbage". He can hand her some of his garbage, and she can walk from the living room into the kitchen and throw it in the trash. Genius, right? Morgan doesn't have to get up, and Baby Girl seems to love this. It seemed like a good idea, until today when I had to fish everything she played with out of the garbage. She's reading a book in the living room. Suddenly she starts walking in the kitchen with her book. I have to chase her down and stop her from throwing it in the garbage. She acts so proud when she successfully throws something in the garbage - its so cute.

She LOVES to play the piano. We have a keyboard, instead of a piano, but she loves to play. Several times a day, she signs 'piano please'. She loves making noise, and pushing the buttons that change the sound of the keyboard. We had to take down our keyboard to make room for our Christmas tree. Our house is not big enough to have both up. We're not sure what to do with the keyboard (maybe put it under our bed until after Christmas). For the last couple of days it has been on the floor in our living room - still plugged in. Baby Girl always walks right over to it and turns it on and plays. Yes, she knows where the power button is and can turn it on and off.

Another trick that she has learned is how to open her bedroom door from her crib. She can also reach the light switch from her crib. I don't think we thought this through, when we put her crib there. She hasn't figured out to turn the light on and off (thankfully). She also hasn't figured out how to turn the door knob. I have gotten into the habit of pulling her door mostly shut, but not all the way. So she can grab the door, wiggle it, and swing it open. I don't mind when she does this after her naps. I mind when she spends her time trying to open the door when she should be sleeping. She things she is so smart!

This weekend was absolutely perfect. As soon as the disasters that occurred on Friday (see Morgan's post below) were over, the weekend was lovely. By lunch time on Saturday, I had my wedding ring back on my finger. I had a deep satisfaction that the mouse that had invaded our house was dead. The weather was awful. It was freezing and stormy and it had just started to snow again. It was wonderful, because we could stay inside and didn't have to go anywhere. I asked Morgan if I could put up the Christmas tree, and he surprisingly said "yes". So, after we ate lunch, we put Baby Girl down for a nap, and I immediately began putting out our Christmas stuff (before Morgan could change his mind). We listened to Christmas music while I unboxed all of our Christmas decorations. Morgan started our first fire of the season in our fireplace. It was so warm and cozy. Pretty soon Morgan decided to take a nap. It was a perfect afternoon, both Baby Girl and Morgan were sleeping. Christmas music was playing. There was a warm fire in our fireplace. It was snowing sideways outside. And I was stringing lights on our Christmas tree. I don't think it could have been a better afternoon. Absolutely perfect!

It was our Stake Conference this weekend. We got one of the young women in our ward to come babysit so we could go to the adult session on Saturday night. It was a great session, and fun to get out of the house without Baby Girl. And Sunday, the general session was great. The conference went from 10:00-12:00 (which is the ideal time for church!). We're used to going to church from 1:00-4:00 (awful for Baby Girl's schedule). We were done with church by noon! It was great. We all came home and got into comfortable clothes and spent the day together. We all took an afternoon nap (yay for Sunday afternoon naps).

Now we can start another week - back to work as usual.

Well, we've had a somewhat eventful Friday the 13th this past week. It started out like any normal day, and we thought we just might survive unscathed; however, about 6:30pm things started to get interesting. First we were just getting back from dinner with my folks when Jen was taking off her seat belt and we both heard a "bing, clink, ding, bang". The weather was cold and her diamond ring slipped off her hand and fell between the middle console and the seat of our car. Now, things always seem to fall in this spot, and we always fish them out from under the seat; however, this was Friday the 13th and it sure couldn't be that easy. We spent two hours searching the car, we found Jr. Mints, Cheerios, a slew of Pen's, some money (only totaling about 45 cents, not enough to make up the cost of the ring), sunglasses, coupons, pieces of children's books, and an assortment of half chewed candy and other unidentifiable objects (yes, you people with kids know what I'm talking about), but no ring. Jen promptly reminded me about how losing your ring is bad luck, and recalled the scene from the movie Apollo 13 where the wife drops her ring down a drain. Well, since I wasn't headed to the moon I told her not to worry and we will find it in the morning when we have more ambient light. We withdrew our efforts and planned to resume in the morning, said goodbye to my parents, and tried to finish out the rest of the evening not worrying too much about the lost ring.

We had sat down and found a good movie on TV, and things were pretty much back to normal (except for the nagging notion that our car had just doubled in price), when out of the corner of my eye I saw something scurry behind our entertainment center. Yes, this something looked to have little beady eyes and a long slender tail, and it moved with great speed and agility. First, I thought it was just my imagination, but then I saw it exit from under the entertainment center and run into our hall. This was unmistakably a mouse. Jen hates mice and started getting really worked up. I went in search for the small vermin, but came up empty handed. I did find out though that we did have a big spider living behind out bed -- don't tell Jen I said that though or it might upset her even more. So after the second hunt of the night, Jen left to the store to get mouse traps. Now you need to understand that our house is not very big, however, when Jen returned from the store she had a whole bag full of mouse traps. I think she wanted to cover every square inch of flooring in our home. We researched what to put on mouse traps (it seems peanut butter works the best) baited them, put them out, and waited.

Now in our research we found out a few interesting notes about how to catch mice I would like to share, in case anyone reading this post runs into this problem. The first is that mice, contrary to popular belief, do not prefer cheese, everywhere I looked suggested peanut butter. The second is that when setting up traps you set them up in pairs (why, I have no idea), and the third thing is that mice like to hug walls when running around so you don't put traps in the open, but rather along the base boards or under ledges.

So with these few tidbits of information we set our traps. Jen was constantly telling me that she wasn't going to sleep tonight. About ten minutes of horrifying silence (yes, it was only about ten minutes) we heard the snap of one of our traps. I go into our laundry room, and there was a little gray mouse struggling for its life with its head smashed inside this trap. It freaked me out a little so I decided to leave it until there was no more movement. After a few minutes I took it out to the trash and discarded the little mangled mouse corpse. We slept relatively sound that night.

In the morning we resumed the search for the missing ring. I knew that it had to be inside the seat somewhere, and got out the tools in attempts to remove the seat. The seat is only held on with 4 bolts, two in the front and two in the back. The front two bolts came off without any problem, so I proceeded to the back. These were put on much tighter and required a bit more strength. Well one of the bolts proved to be much more troublesome than I had expected. After failing with a wrench, I got out my trusty chrome molly lifetime warranty ratchet set. I kid you not, that bolt actually ruined my 9/16 socket by cracking and ballooning it out so it could not catch the edges of the bolt. I went down to the store and got a replacement. This time I ended up giving it some hard taps with the hammer, and then the ratchet gave way -- and not in a good way. I had ended up rounding off the edges of the bolt. Getting out a file I tried to restore the edges and decided this was not going to work with the tools that I had. I had the bright idea that a lube shop might have a pneumatic wrench that might do the trick, so I took it down to a local Jiffy Lube (after a bit of a laugh from some of the mechanics there) and they were able to get it loose for me. I took it home, took out the seat and tipped it upside-down on a tarp. I hear something klinck around and a quarter dropped out from the seat onto the tarp. A QUARTER! WHAT! Shortly afterwards, however, a shiny diamond ring followed the quarter and out onto the tarp.

By far this was our most memorable and cursed Friday the 13th experience to date.

I am officially free from my classes! It was nice to be able to take some classes again. I liked getting my brain to think like that again. But I am glad to have my time free again! We've had a beautiful fall the last couple of weeks. It has been pretty warm and sunny and beautiful! We've already raked a ton of leaves off our lawn, and our trees still have tons of leaves left. We even got some flower bulbs planted so we can have beautiful flowers in the spring. I LOVE this time of year!

Last week, we went to a park and took a couple of pictures of our family. It was so beautiful! It's kind of hard to capture the attention of a 14 month old for very long. She got tired of sitting still and looking at the blinking light. We got a couple of good ones! You can click here to see some of the other pictures we took.

We had a fantastic Halloween. I honestly love this holiday. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's near my birthday. Maybe because the leaves and trees are so beautiful. Maybe because it seems to be the kick off to the Holiday Season! I LOVE IT! I don't like all of the bloody, scary, haunted part of Halloween. I like the trick-or-treaters, cute pumpkins, and happy part of Halloween.

Halloween morning, I had to do some errands, so Morgan took Baby Girl with him to run some errands. Morgan got her dressed up in her Halloween costume. They went to buy some candy for our trick-or-treaters. That afternoon, we went shopping. The weather was BEAUTIFUL! We just enjoyed our time together.

That evening, well late-afternoon, we took Baby Girl trick-or-treating. That's a little misleading. She's so little, she doesn't understand what's going on. We just went to our friends' house that live next to us. We went and said 'trick-or-treat' in behalf of Baby Girl. She grabbed a long, skinny Tootsie Roll from the bowl. We stayed and visited for a minute, while she played with their son. After chatting for a few minutes, we came home to hopefully catch the MANY trick-or-treaters that we hoped would come. Baby Girl still had a good grip on her Tootsie Roll. I put her in her high chair so I could fix her dinner. A minute later I looked at Baby Girl, she had unwrapped that Tootsie Roll and was going to town on it. She had brown drool dripping from her face and hands. It was so cute. So I let her finish her Tootsie Roll, then she had dinner. Dessert first on Halloween - isn't that right? Morgan got some Halloween music, so we were rocking out to "Monster Mash" and "Ghostbusters". After Baby Girl went to bed, Morgan settled in to watch "Night of the Living Dead". I can handle those kind of scary movies - where it's old, and mostly cheesy! We had a few trick-or-treaters, but we still had LOTS of candy left over!

This has been a week of Halloween! Baby Girl's costume this year is a witch! She's already worn it 3 times this week, and it's not even Halloween! Tuesday night was our Ward Halloween Carnival. We got to go play games, and color pictures and eat candy. It was fun. Morgan even dressed up too. Well, he HAD to dress up. He was in charge of one of the booths. He wore his fishing vest and fishing hat. Easy.

Then on Wednesday, Baby Girl and I went to our Play Group. It was a Halloween one so everyone could see everyone's costumes. Kids costumes are so cute!

Then today we went to Story Time at the local Library. They were having a Halloween themed Story Time, so everyone was dressed in their Halloween Costumes. They sang Halloween songs, and read a Halloween story, and did a Halloween puppet show! Baby Girl loves Story Time. She doesn't participate, she just stares contently at what's going on. There were so many cute costumes. There was a little girl dressed as Minnie Mouse. Another girl dressed as Dorothy. It was so cute! 

They say that we should find "joy in our posterity" - and these pictures of Baby Girl do exactly that! Actually, I find more amusement in these pictures. Morgan and I just laugh. It's awful, I know, but it's funny! Baby Girl has found her nose! She can point to it when you ask her 'Where's your nose?". This is adorable. She's also found there are two holes at the end of her nose where it is fun to stick her finger. Yesterday, she was just walking back and forth our living room with her finger up her nose. I try to tell her not to and pull her hand out, but she just giggles and sticks it up further. What a strange child. So, I just grabbed the camera.

She's proving to be a pretty smart baby. (Aside from the fact that she walks around the house with her finger up her nose). Last night, after dinner, I was going to let Baby Girl play for another 20-30 minutes before bed time. She came up to me and said "nap". So, I asked her if she wanted to take a nap? She did a series of grunts which means YES. "Really? Are you sure you want to go to bed? Okay, let's go get you in your pajamas." Then Baby Girl did the sign for 'diaper'. "Yes, we'll change your diaper too." Then she grabbed my hand and lead me into her room so we could get her pjs on. I won't complain if my child WANTS to go to bed! That's fantastic! She's too smart!

Where did October go? I've had several people point out the fact that I haven't posted anything new for several weeks. Sorry! We've had a lot going on in our lives. The main excuse that I'll give for not posting is the fact that I'm taking some online classes. Yay! I'm pretty excited about it. Yes, I already have a college degree - why take classes? My teaching license is expiring in the next few months, and I would like to keep it current. I'm taking 3 classes through UEN (Utah Education Network). They are only 6 weeks long, but they require several hours of me sitting at the computer watching tutorials, doing assignments and participating in a discussion room weekly. That's what has been filling my 'free time' (aka Baby Girl's nap time). So, I haven't made time to blog about our adventures.

One of the most exciting things happening in our lives is Baby Girl is walking. My last post was clips of her first steps. She now walks all over the place. She can even stand up on her own, without the help of furniture. She still falls down a lot, and always announces a loud "Uh Oh!" when she does, but she's getting more and more stable on her feet every day. Here's a video I took of her a couple weeks ago. I like her little giggle at the end.

Another exciting thing this month was Morgan's brother got married! Yay! Now Morgan and I are not the only one of our siblings who is married. We got to go to a Bridal Shower and a Rehearsal Dinner and the wedding! Dana and Paige got married on the 17th and they had a BEAUTIFUL ceremony. We are so happy for them! Here are some of the pictures from the wedding. Thanks to Morgan's cousin, Jasey, for the pictures. I stole them from her!

This weekend we went to Morgan's parents for a couple of days. Morgan's aunt and uncle were visiting from Arizona. It was fun to visit them. Morgan went fishing with his uncle and dad. I don't know if it's still called fishing if no one catches anything though! That's all we'll say about that! Baby Girl's favorite part was the stray cat that Morgan's family feeds. Baby Girl would stand at the back door and look out the window and point and say 'doggie'. We tried to get her to say 'kitty', but it was always 'doggie'. She loved that cat, and even got to pet him. What a silly girl.

Last, but not least, its my birthday! This is what Baby Girl gave me for my birthday and I thought I would share:

Isn't that adorable?! Well, we are very much alive and doing well! And I'll try to do better with posting blogs! 

As if crawling wasn't mobile enough, Baby Girl took her first steps this week! She is on the road to walking. She pulls herself to standing on EVERYTHING. She cruises along our furniture. And she pushes her little walker/stroller that she got for her birthday everywhere. Her balance has improved drastically in the last week. She can stand without holding on for a long time. She loves to take steps in to our arms. She usually takes about two steps, then falls down. But she's gone as many as 4 steps before she tumbles over. She thinks its a fun game and just laughs and smiles as she does it. You can see in the video that she's getting tired towards the end of the video. She already keeps us on our toes as a crawler - but as a walker - LOOK OUT!

Also, this is a cute video of our Baby Mozart. She's playing an original masterpiece for us! She must have made a mistake somewhere in the middle because you can hear her say "uh oh"! What a cutie!

Let it be said that our blood runs BLUE for USU Aggies!! The one and only! We're starting our little one early - so she'll know there's only one school for her! She has an Aggie bib. She's holding up a finger saying "Aggies are Number One!". Then she wore her USU onesie on Game Day last Saturday. I know the Aggies lost (only by 8 points), but at least they were defeated with dignity (unlike another university in Utah that was defeated 54-28 - how humiliating!)

So in honor of the fall, football season, and our Alma Mater - Here is our Fight Song!

Show me a Scotsman,
Who doesn't love the thistle.
Show me an English man,
Who doesn't love the rose.
Show me a true blooded
Aggie from Utah,
Who doesn't love the spot . . .
Where the sagebrush grows!

Last Saturday, Morgan's parents took Baby Girl (and us) to the zoo! It's been something that they've been wanting to do all summer, and we finally were able to do it! It was beautiful weather. Baby Girl LOVED it! She kept pointing at all the animals. We even saw the brand new baby elephant. Baby Girl liked the Mama Elephant more (I think because it was easier for her to see). Baby Girl loved the giraffes too! And we even saw a baby giraffe too. She liked the black bears too. We kept watching and waiting to see if the bear would end up going swimming, but he just drank from the water instead of went swimming in it.

We went out to dinner after the zoo. It was fun to spend time with family! And our little girl got spoiled! I guess that's what happens when she's a first grandbaby.

I'm pretty sure I have the smartest baby ever. No offense to other babies - I'm sure they are smart too, but mine is pretty darn smart! She understands so much, it's incredible. It surprises me how much she understands. She understands when I say: take a bath, eat lunch/dinner, change your bum, go for a walk, read scriptures, say a prayer, where's Elmo?, wave bye-bye, find Daddy, where's your doll? ... It's amazing. She communicates a lot through pointing and gesturing and grunting. It's still a guessing game, because she sometimes wants things that I don't understand - then she gets frustrated. She doesn't have the words yet, but she does have some signs down. She wouldn't do 'more' for the video - but she definitely knows that one. Also 'food', 'all done', and 'milk'. She can also fold her arms. She knows how to hold up one finger when you ask her how old she is - but she wouldn't do it for me for the video. It surprises me how much she understands and is learning every day! What a sweet heart.

We went to the doctor for Baby Girl's 12 month check up - and immunizations. The shots never get easier. I made Morgan come to the appointment with me. The check up went well. She's doing fantastic. She weighed in at 21 lbs 14 oz. which is in the 50-75 percentile. She's 30 1/2 inches long (the 75-90%). and her head measures 46.8 cm (which is in the 90%). So, she's as healthy as can be. She HATED when the doctor examined her. She just squirmed and screamed as he tried to listen to her heart, and check her ears and mouth and tummy. She did not like it at all. She cried long after the doctor left. We finally got her settled down, then the nurse came in to give her the shots. We had to hold her down and she just cried and cried. As soon as we got her dressed, she seemed fine. She recovered from the shots sooner than she did from the doctor exam.That's how it always is. She even got a little sucker for being such a brave girl. When did my baby become a toddler?

Apparently, our Baby Girl had a lot of important business to take care of on the phone today. She climbed up on top of our love sac, where she has a nice view of the outside world. Then she would grab our phone and hold it up to her ear. She loves to do this! With our home phone, our cell phones, her toy cell phone, our remote controls! We tell her "Say Hello!", and she holds it up to her ear. Then she hands us the phone, like its for us. We talk for a second and hand it back to her - and she just smiles that we are playing along with her game! 

Honestly, how did she get so smart! I love watching her play now. It's so imaginative. I just wonder what she's thinking as she's playing! What a silly girl! 

To celebrate Baby Girl's first birthday, we had a birthday party! We had it on Saturday afternoon with some close family members. I'm pretty sure that Baby Girl didn't really care that much about the party. She didn't really know what was going on, but I was excited! I think we had a party mostly for my benefit than for hers! We sent out invitations. We put up decorations (just balloons - but Baby Girl loved the balloons). And it was so much fun! We had a full house, and it was wonderful to have family come and celebrate with our baby!

Baby Girl got so many fantastic gifts! I think she enjoyed opening her presents. The first one that she opened was a Glockenspiel from Morgan's Aunt Christine and cousin Jasey. She loved to play it. When we tried to set it aside so she could open another present, she got upset. As we opened more gifts, she got more excited and less upset to set the fun new toys to the side because she knew she would see another new one soon! She's a very spoiled one year old. To see pictures of the some of the presents that she got click the follwing links 1 2 3 4.

After presents, we went outside to hit a pinata. Yes, a pinata! Baby Girl was the only child at the party, yet I made several adults gather around and try to hit a ladybug shaped pinata. Then I expected them to gather treats off the ground after it was broken. And they did it! Thanks for humoring me! I actually made the pinata a couple of months ago at a church Enrichment meeting. It was fun to learn how to make a pinata. And we had to use it sometime - why not Baby Girl's birthday party!

After the pinata, we came inside for cake! I made a ladybug cake to match my ladybug pinata! It turned out super cute! I was rather proud of it! We all sang 'Happy Birthday' to our little one year old, and she did not know what to think. She just looked around at us, very confused, and a little scared. It was cute! I sliced up the cake and let Baby Girl dive into a slice. She was pretty delicate about it. She kept eating little tiny pieces. Frosting ended up all over her hands and face. She didn't eat very much of the cake though. She was just done with the whole party by this point. I was surprised, I thought she would have LOVED the cake! But it's probably for the best that she didn't eat too much of it.

She was happy to wave 'bye-bye' to her guests, blowing kisses to those that were leaving. Thanks to those that came! It was a wonderful party!

On Friday, September 11, our Baby Girl turned ONE! I can't believe how big she is! She is so smart! If you ask her how old she is, she can hold up one finger! She waves 'bye-bye' to everyone: cars as they drive by, people in the grocery store, random things that she sees on our walks, and (of course) Morgan when he leaves for work every morning. She's learned a few more signs. In addition to asking for 'more', she can also do the sign for 'food', 'all done', and 'milk'. She loves to give kisses and to blow kisses! I can't kiss Morgan without Baby Girl wanting to give both of us a kiss too! She even gives her dolls and stuffed animals kisses too. She can crawl at an incredible speed (especially if she is trying to get away from me!).She pulls herself to standing on everything she can. She's learned to stand in her crib - (which is my least favorite). For a week after she learned that, she wouldn't lay down and go to sleep. She would stand up and just cry and cry. She's getting better now though. She's starting to walk more along our furniture too. She loves to walk while holding our fingers. She can point to her doll's eyes, mouth and ears (when asked to do so). She understands when I tell her to: read her books, comb her hair, and get her blanket! She's absolutely adorable and we love her so much! We couldn't imagine our lives without her! 

For her birthday, we got Baby Girl a couple of books and a walker/toy stroller. She loves to walk by pushing her stroller! All day long, she just cruised back and forth our living room, pushing her toy doll! And for her birthday dinner, I fixed her favorite dinner: Instant Macaroni and Cheese! She loves that stuff! She just shoved her mouth full of it! I think she had a very wonderful 1st birthday!

Baby Girl is growing up. It's like she's a little girl, instead of a baby. Where did the last year go? She is understanding so much! She is 'talking' non-stop. She tries to copy the words that I saw to her. She copies us in everything! We're going to have to start being careful! This morning, I was playing with Baby Girl on the floor in our living room. She grabbed the remote control and pointed it towards the tv. The tv still remained off, but I think she was trying to turn it on. Then she handed me the remote and wanted me to turn on the tv. She started getting mad that the tv wasn't on. It's bad news when my baby knows that the remote can control the television, and she gets upset when its not on. Main Message: We probably watch too much tv.

One of the most precious things that she does when she copies us, is when she folds her arms when we say a prayer. At first, it was just folding her hands, but now she folds her arms. Its usually for about 2 seconds, but still - when she sees that we have our arms folded, she folds her arms too. Morgan and I have started saying our prayers with one eye open - watching Baby Girl, because she always ends up folding her arms once or twice through out the prayer. We got a picture of it today - it wasn't during a prayer, but she folded her arms so we could take a picture of her! Absolutely adorable.

I've been saying "Maybe she's teething" about our Baby Girl for the last 7 months. She has always drooled a lot. She always puts things in her mouth. And occasionally she is just fussy (for no apparent reason). Week after week, month after month, no teeth would appear. I've always been kind of grateful she was toothless because I was nursing her. About a week and a half ago, Baby Girl finally had her first tooth break through. I think it took its sweet time trying to break through the surface. As her little baby tooth is growing, the tooth right next to that is trying to break through too. Her gums are swollen and she's been pretty fussy for the last week or so. My poor baby. Here is a pretty goofy picture of our little girl, but if you click on the picture to make it bigger, you can see her little tooth pretty well.

Here are a couple of pictures that I took of our Baby Girl yesterday. She looks so cute in jeans. It's getting harder to get a cute picture out of her. She doesn't hold still for very long. I set her on the ground and she tries to crawl away as soon as she can. Then when I try to get her to look at the camera, she doesn't seem to care. She looks at everything except me. She's still a cutie!

Baby Girl and I had a Girls Day Out. We went to a local exhibit - Farm Animals. I wasn't sure how much our little one would enjoy looking at all the animals, but she loved it! It was set up so she could see most of the animals from her stroller. And we could get really close to most of the animals. They even let us pet and feed some of them. Baby Girl loved to point at all the animals. She would make a little screechy noise - which usually means that she likes what she's looking at. She loved to look from a distance, but got really scared whenever we got too close to an animal. She wouldn't pet any of them. If you look at the picture with the baby calf, Baby Girl is nervously looking at me, because she is getting too close. We saw all sorts of animals: horses, pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, turkens. (Yes, turkens.) What's a turken you might ask? I've included a picture of a turken - and the sign that explains it. It was a beautiful day. We had a picnic on the grass. It was a fun girls day out! 

My little sister takes piano lessons just up the hill from where we live, so quite often her and my mother will come and visit us Fridays after the lesson. Jen and I always look forward to this because aside from catching up on all the home-town gossip it also gives Jen and I a chance to get out of the house for a bit while they watch Baby Girl.

My little sister is the youngest in the family and always complains that we take way too many pictures of Baby Girl, although this is probably true, I think she is just jealous that Baby Girl had more pictures taken in her first three months than my sister's entire life. So last Friday when Jen and I went out, I guess my sister felt the need to compensate for this difference and took a some pictures of herself on our camera. We did not notice the pictures until today so I thought I might have a bit of fun and post my lovely little sister's picture on the blog for all to see. This is however, the risk you take when secretly taking your own picture on other people's camera -- learn from her mistakes people! So we found the best picture we could, as not to embarrass my little sister, and posted it because we just have TOO many pictures of Baby Girl on this blog. Please enjoy and remember that when crossing the street to look both ways.

For our family outing, this weekend, we went to our County Fair. I enjoy fairs. I'm not sure why. It's usually really hot, and dirty. Nothing really fun to do, but I enjoy going to them. This County Fair is NOTHING like the State Fair that I grew up attending. It was very small. It was free to get in (my most favorite part). They had some food booths, commercial booths, 4-H booths, carnival rides and games, and animals. It was all very small. It was still fun to attend. They were even having a Tractor Pull (which was also free to attend). Have you ever attended a Tractor Pull? We watched probably 90 seconds of this one and I was bored to tears. Maybe others are more exciting. Maybe there was a reason why only 18 people were in attendance at this event! My 2nd most favorite part of the fair was the sign in one of the pictures. Morgan and Baby Girl are posing under the sign "Taxidermy and Fair Office". It described our little county fair perfectly - pretty redneck! It was nice, cool weather, and fun to just be together!

Our Baby Girl is officially crawling. She's started crawling a while ago, but now she consistently crawls. No more army crawling! Here's a short video clip of our baby crawling across the floor!

Good Golly, Miss Molly - our Baby Girl is already 11 months old! When did that happen? She is keeping us on our toes! She is officially into EVERYTHING! She doesn't hold still for longer than 45 seconds. She is crawling all over the place. She occasionally gets lazy and reverts back to her army crawl, but she mostly crawls the real way. She pulls herself to standing too. She tries to climb on everything. Just this week, she's gotten several bumps and scrapes - from her trying to climb something and falling down. I know it will start to happen more, but it still makes me sad. According to our home scale, she weighs 21 1/2 pounds. What a chunker! She loves to eat. We can't eat anything in front of her, without her wanting some. She acts like we never feed her. I think she would eat cheerios and animal crackers all day long, if we let her. She loves playing peek-a-boo and patty-cake. She sleeps 12-13 hours at night - and I LOVE it! Her naps are shorter because of it, but it's nice to have her in bed by 6:30.

This is a video of our little climber that I took yesterday. She used our Love Sac to stand up. Then she continued to start climbing up the Love Sac! Today, she climbed up onto twice and started crawling around on top of it! She makes it so we have to be on the look out! She'll crawl up there, but she tries to crawl off of it too - and she would land right on her head, if we let her. This picture was taken of her this morning after she climbed up onto our Love Sac. She's just sitting back, enjoying her victory! I think this is just another piece of evidence that she is just like her daddy! Maybe she'll be a rock climber, just like him!

Baby Girl loves books. She loves when we read to her. She points at the pictures on the pages. When she plays in her room, she always crawls over to her bookshelf, pulls down her books, and 'reads' her books. She opens the pages and looks at the pictures. And she always 'talks' when she's looking at the books - just like she's reading them. It is so cute! Hopefully she'll continue to like reading when she gets to school.

I love the weekends! Mostly because Morgan gets to stay home with us! Saturday morning I made some cinnamon rolls. Morgan was in charge of watching Baby Girl while I did this. After my rolls were rising, I came into the living room to find Baby Girl sitting on Morgan's lap. Morgan had shared one of his Oreo cookies with Baby Girl. She had black cookie goo all over the place! What a mess! I think Baby Girl was in heaven! She loved it! He wiped off her face and hands, then handed her over to me. Her shirt had cookie all over it. And there was dried black cookie gunk still on her face. So, I gave her a bath and changed her outfit. When Baby Girl spends time with her Daddy, she looks like this picture! When she spends time with her Mommy, she is in a cute outfit with combed hair and smells clean and pretty. Baby Girl probably enjoyed the cookie with Daddy the most! 

During our family vacation, we were able to play at the beach at Bear Lake. We went there the first day we arrived at Bear Lake. Unfortunately, it was windy and kind of cloudy. The water was cold (but it's always cold at Bear Lake), and the wind was blowing. We put Baby Girl's feet in the water, and she loved to kick the water. We put her in her floaty and she loved it. She enjoyed splashing the water. She also kept trying to crawl out of her floaty and nose dive into the water. What a silly girl. We didn't stay too long, because it was kind of cold. Baby Girl didn't seem to mind the temperature at all. Then Saturday, Morgan got to play on the lake. He went jet skiing while Baby Girl and I took a nap. Then we went back to the beach on Monday. The sun was shining, and it was a beautiful day to be at the beach. The water was still very cold. We just waded in the water. Baby Girl liked kicking and splashing us. We put her on the sand. She didn't like it at first. She just sat there and whined. We started pushing sand on her feet. Then she started to play with the sand. She grabbed a handful of sand and shoved it in her mouth (of course). You can see in one of the pictures, she has sand all over her face! We built a large sand volcano! And the best part of our time at the beach - NO ONE got sunburned! That never seems to happen! One of us always seems to get sunburned!

So, we got back from our Bear Lake vacation Monday night. Morgan didn't have to return to work until Thursday. So that means, we had all day Tuesday and Wednesday at home together! We spent most of Tuesday catching up on household things - mowing/watering the lawn, laundry, unpacking, relaxing. Then today we decided to extend our vacation a little bit! We traveled to Salt Lake for the day. Baby Girl fell asleep on the journey there. She was holding her blanket up over her head. She always does this when she's playing 'peek-a-boo'. I wonder if she fell asleep while she was playing. What a silly girl. We ate lunch at the Rodizio Grill, I've never been there. We had a gift certificate that we needed to use. The waiters kept bringing around slabs of meat for us to eat. It all tasted so yummy. We ate entirely too much food.

After lunch, we went to Red Butte Gardens. Morgan's brother, Dana, works there. He gave us the grand tour. It is such a beautiful place! So many blooming flowers and plants. It's a very nice place. The only down side, it was almost 100 degrees! That is too hot for me! But we got some cute pictures. The first picture is of a flowering tree (I don't remember the name of it). I thought it was rather pretty. The next picture is of Morgan and Baby Girl feeding the ducks. We bought some food pellets, and the ducks went crazy. They were definitely not afraid of people. They would eat food right out of our hands. Baby Girl thought they were funny. She kept giggling at them.

On Monday, our last day of vacation at Bear Lake, we went to Minnetonka Cave. I've never been there before. It was a fun break from the beach/swimming part of our trip. It took a little while to drive to the cave. When we got there, we found out it would be a 90 minute tour. I just hoped that Baby Girl would stay happy for 90 minutes! The temperature of the cave was 40 degrees. Luckily we brought jackets. We loaded Baby Girl into the carrier. Morgan decided that he would be the pack mule! It was actually pretty interesting. And Baby Girl did so well! They said there was no food or drink allowed in the cave, but I smuggled in a container of Cheerios to occupy Baby Girl. As long as we were on the move, we didn't need the treats. Baby Girl enjoyed climbing all the stairs. She would reach out her hands and giggle as Morgan climbed up and down the stairs throughout the cave. Whenever we stopped and the tour guide was telling us about the cave, that's when Baby Girl got a little impatient. I would secretly shove a Cheerio in her mouth while the tour guide wasn't looking! It reminded me how out of shape I am, as we climbed 444 stairs in to the cave, and 444 stairs out of the cave. It was a highlight of our vacation!

We just got back from our family vacation. It's the first time we've been away from home for longer than one night with Baby Girl. I was a stress case when I was getting ready for our vacation. I tried to think of everything we could possibly need, and with a baby - that is a lot of stuff. We got everything packed and ready on Thursday, so we could leave bright and early Friday morning. We went to Bear Lake for Raspberry Days. Morgan and I have been to Bear Lake quite often since we've been married. We actually met at Bear Lake during Raspberry Days four years ago. So, it's a fun place for us to be. This was Baby Girl's first trip there.

We stayed with Morgan's very generous Aunt Chris and Uncle Bob. They have a cabin at Bear Lake. A large portion of Morgan's family was also there. Parents, sisters, grandparents, aunts, cousins. It was a full house. Loads of fun. We stayed there Friday and Saturday night. We got to do so many fun things. We went to the beach a couple of times. Morgan got to go fishing. Morgan also went Jet Skiing. We got to visit with old friends and family members. We played games. We relaxed. We ate too much. Then on Sunday, my dad, step-mom, sister, aunt and uncle came to Bear Lake and we stayed with them in a condo. It was fun to spend time with family. We came home Monday night. One of the best things was Baby Girl was not people shy around all these new faces! It was fantastic, and allowed me to relax a little! In fact, Sunday morning, it was just Morgan, Baby Girl and me for half the day, and Baby Girl was super clingy and fussy. Then when we got around new people, she seemed just fine! I think she preferred the crowds. Yay! What a relief.

These are just a couple of random pictures from our vacation. I'll have to post some more in upcoming blogs. The first picture is during Baby Girl's lunch. This was at Morgan's aunt and uncle's cabin. Her face is a mess, but her eyes are so beautiful. There is a reflection from the windows in her eyes. The second picture is right after lunch, but before nap time. She was starting to get a little ornery. She's adorable, even when she looks like slightly angry! The third picture is after we went swimming. Baby Girl had sun screen still in her hair, so it was easy for her hair to stand straight up. Then the 4th picture is Baby Girl with her styling new tennis shoes. They were a struggle to get on, and she didn't really like them on, but they are cute. She tried 'walking' with them, and she kept tripping over them. This weekend, Baby Girl decided that she LOVED to go 'walking' -  where we hold her fingers and let her walk. We've done this a lot before with her, but she didn't seem to care that she was walking. But over the weekend, she decided that this is the funnest thing in the world. She just gets so excited and wants to 'walk' ALL the time! What a silly girl. She's also more consistently crawling. She still gets lazy and ends up army crawling a lot, but she is actually crawling for real - more and more. She also learned how to pull herself to a standing position. I thought she was on the move before - but look out. She never sits still! 

Anyway, we had a fantastic vacation, and we are glad to be home! We spent a day just recovering from our vacation! A special THANK YOU to those we stayed with for our vacation! We enjoyed our time at Bear Lake.

This is our silly baby! We snapped this picture the other night. I was getting Baby Girl ready for bed, and as I was taking her shirt off, it got stuck on her head. So, straightened it out a little, and made her look like a nun! Her fat rolls are slowing getting smaller. It makes me kind of sad! I love her fat rolls. Now that's she's scooting all over the place, she's getting a lot more exercise! As you can see from the picture, she still has plenty of fat on her, but she's getting a lot taller and leaner.

She's also rediscovered her tongue. She is always sticking her tongue out. She can almost touch her nose with her tongue! I hear slurping noises while she plays, and I see her stick her tongue in and out of her mouth. You can see her tongue poking out a little in this picture. Here is a video of Baby Girl showing us her tongue.

I thought this was an adorable picture! Baby Girl was having a rough night last night. She was ornery and fussy. It was very easy to make her cry! Morgan was trying to entertain her and distract her from crying with the camera. This was a cute picture that was taken. It doesn't look like taking pictures distracted her too much! But she did stop crying, when Morgan turned the camera around to show her the pictures that they just took. Morgan is really good with her!

Baby Girl is close enough to crawling. She can Army Crawl like a Ninja. She is so close to actually crawling. She gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth. She's taken a little crawling step, then she plops down on her belly, and army crawls to where she wants to go. Yesterday, Baby Girl was playing in her room while I was getting ready for swimming lessons. After I was ready, I went in her room, and this is what I found! I saw little baby toes sticking out of underneath of her crib. We store her carrier car seat underneath her crib. She had crawled under her crib, up onto her car seat, to play with the buckles. What a silly baby! She is officially getting into everything!

We went on a little one night trip over the weekend. We had a family reunion to go to. Going away for a couple of days with a baby is about 20 times the work. It's always fun, but never relaxing. It always seems to be more work for me. Whenever we are away from home, Baby Girl seems to be more difficult. We are always around new people, in a new place, and she usually doesn't nap as well, so that equals an ornery baby. However, our trip last weekend, went very well! Baby Girl did such a great job! She was such a trooper. Baby Girl was, by far, the best behaved on this trip, than any other trip she's been on.

We started out early Saturday morning. We had about a 3 1/2 - 4 hour drive. We stopped half way for a little pit stop. Baby Girl needed to eat and get changed. She needed to get out and wiggle a little bit. This is a cute picture of us on the side of the road. Baby Girl has a long weed that she's holding up. Morgan showed her how to chew on it. She thought this was the coolest thing! Babies are entertained by the simplest things! I love it!

We had a family reunion on Saturday. Morgan's uncle called the family together for a 'Farewell Reunion'. It was fun to get together with family. There were a lot of family members there that I've never met, and Morgan hasn't seen for many years. We had a potluck BBQ outside. The weather was really nice (as long as you stayed in the shade). We put Baby Girl on the grass. She never really likes the grass at first, but then she gets used to it. She spent most of the time shoving fist fulls of grass into her mouth. Therefore, I spent most of the time, fishing blades of grass out of her mouth. It was irresistible to her to pull the grass and shove it into her mouth! What a silly girl.

Then we went spent Saturday evening and Sunday at my mother's house. She had a lot of fun. My mother even got her a baby pool for the yard. So, Baby Girl got to go swimming. The water was kind of cool, but it felt really nice in the hot weather. Baby Girl liked to splash and play with some swim toys. We didn't bring her swimming suit, so she got to go skinny dipping. Baby Girl did SOOO well around other people. We've learned the trick - if you want to hold our daughter, you need to lure her away with food. All you have to do is give her a little bite of a cracker, or Cheerio, or bread, and she will be your friend! Even my brother, Skyler, who has ALWAYS made Baby Girl cry - befriended her and she was just fine playing with him. As long as he understands that when she clapped her hands together, that means she wants 'MORE'.

The other secret to having a happy baby while out of town, is to make sure she gets the proper sleep. She got all of her naps, and slept really well all night! And she was a happy baby! This is an adorable picture of Baby Girl sleeping in my arms. This RARELY happens. It hasn't happened in many, many months. She must have been really tired. She fell asleep while I was nursing her. It gave me a couple of moments to cuddle her without her arching her back and trying to crawl away from me. We put Baby Girl to bed by 6:30 Saturday night, then Morgan and I went on a date! It was fun to be able to leave her and do something together! We played some tennis. Actually, we didn't play a real game, we just hit the ball back and forth. Morgan was helping me with my swinging and back swing. It was a lot of fun. We went to Wingers and got some Asphalt Pie. It was fun to be together without our little one!

Overall, we had a fantastic weekend away. It wasn't as stressful as our previous outings. We are going on a vacation in a couple of weeks. We're going to be gone for several days and nights, hopefully, Baby Girl will be as well behaved as she was this weekend! When she's a happy baby, we are a happier family!

Baby Girl and I are taking swimming lessons this summer! One of our neighbors has a two year old boy, and they talked us into taking a parent/tot swimming lesson class with them through the city. Today was our first lesson! It was a lot of fun, and Baby Girl LOVED it! It only goes for 2 weeks (Mon-Thurs) for half an hour a day. Baby Girl was so excited! This is a picture of Baby Girl right before we went over to the pool. Our lessons are in an outdoor pool, and it's so nice when it's warm outside to be swimming. The Parent/Tot class is for babies from 6 months-2 years. Baby Girl looks like she's the youngest. We mostly just play games in the water, and it's so much fun! (I probably enjoyed it more than Baby Girl!) We sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and dripped water on the babies. We sang "Ring Around the Rosies", and instead of 'Ashes, Ashes' we sang "Splashes, Splashes". Then 'we all fall down', we were supposed to dunk the babies. I just put Baby Girl's chin in the water. I think she loved it, when we got to that part, she would open her mouth really wide to try and drink the water! Baby Girl's favorite part of the lesson was when we got rubber duckies and would chase after them. I would hold Baby Girl off to my side, so she was floating on her tummy on top of the water, and we would 'swim' to the rubber duckies! Then after she would grab it, and put it in her mouth, then I would throw it away again, so we could go swim to it again. We also sat Baby Girl on the side of the pool, and sang "Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great FALLLL", and I would lift her into the water. She liked this and started lunging toward the pool when we got to that part of the song! Baby Girl really loves the water and swimming!

I cannot believe that our Baby Girl is 10 months old. What happened? She's almost one? When did that happen? Pretty soon she's not going to be a baby anymore. She is absolutely adorable. She's growing and developing like crazy! All of the questions that the Doctor asked at her 9 month check up, I can now answer 'yes' to. That's good! She can clap two toys together. She can play Patty-Cake. She even starts playing Patty-Cake when you start singing the song. She can practically crawl. She has the army crawl down to a science. She moves from room to room within our little house without any trouble. She often times gets up on her hands and knees, but can't quite figure it out. It's only a matter of days before she'll figure it out! I can stand her next to a couch, or our love sac, and she can stand. She's getting better at 'walking' while we hold her fingers. She's also figured out how to sit up on her own - except she only does it in her crib. I think she uses the bars of her crib to help her sit up. (This is my least favorite new trick). The last two nights when I put her down to bed, I peek in her room and find her sitting up playing - and NOT sleeping. Silly girl needs to SLEEP, not play! In addition to learning the sign language for 'more', she is also gesturing a lot. Instead of pointing, she holds out an open hand, the palm of her hand pointing toward her. Like she's displaying something! She'll be a fantastic Visitor Center Missionary someday! She's getting better with her Separation Anxiety. She's still a major Mama's girl, but she is getting better about letting other people hold her and feed her and play with her. Someday she'll grow out of it (right?). What a beautiful baby that we LOVE so much! 

Several months ago, I bought a book about teaching your baby Sign Language. I've seen other babies who are amazing at sign language, so I thought I would give it a whirl. The main sign I started teaching Baby Girl was the sign for 'milk'. I showed her the sign every time she nursed. I did really good at the beginning. She knows what the sign means. Whenever she pulls away and looks at something else, I give her the sign for milk, and she latches immediately back on. She's never repeated it though. I've tried introducing other signs - but I haven't been all that consistent with it. I need to be more consistent, if she's going to learn it.

This week, I started teaching her the sign for 'more'. This is a picture of some random baby doing the sign for 'more'. That is what it should look like. Baby Girl has learned this sign! Not only does she understand it, but she can do the sign. It's not as defined as the picture of the other baby, but she brings her hands together when she wants another one. The first day she was doing it, I wasn't sure if she knew what she was doing. But now, I'm convinced that she understands what it means! What a smart baby. Enjoy the video of Baby Girl's new trick.

Our Baby Girl is a wild sleeper. She is all over her crib. She's on her tummy, side or back. Half the time her face is buried against the bumper. It's really adorable. Now, every time she wakes up from her nap or in the morning, her hair is all messed up! It's usually sticking up in a couple of different places. This is a silly picture that I took of Baby Girl after she woke up from her nap yesterday. Her hair is poking up. I noticed recently that her legs are getting tan. Her legs are tanner than mine! I lather her up with sun screen every time we go out doors. I rarely put sun screen on me. Somehow - she has more tan legs! Maybe she'll get Morgan's tan skin!

What a wonderful holiday weekend! Morgan had Friday off as a holiday, so we decided to go visit Morgan's parents. We did a bunch of fun things! Friday was absolutely exhausting! We drove straight to a canyon near his parents' house. His parents and siblings were already up there. After we met up with them, we went on a hike. We loaded Baby Girl in the hiking backpack that we have. She did really good for a lot of the hike. After a while, she started getting tired and fussy. So, we decided to turn around, and only finish half of the hike. On our way back down, Baby Girl fell asleep. If we would have known she would have fallen asleep, we would have finished the hike. Oh well. We'll have to finish the hike another time.

After the hike, we had a picnic. It was a beautiful day. After the picnic, we left Baby Girl with Morgan's parents and went rock climbing. This was my first time climbing in the wilderness! Morgan's taken me climbing at an indoor wall a couple of times. We found a climb that wasn't occupied. Morgan climbed it first and took the rope to the top. Then his sister, Ali, climbed it. Then I got to climb it. I didn't think I would make it very far! They said the first part was the hardest, so I didn't think I would get very far! But I got past the hard part! Baby Girl was getting impatient and tired. So, we packed up our stuff and headed back to Morgan's parents' house. We had a nice dinner of Sanpete Turkey, corn on the cob, watermelon. We had dutch oven peach cobbler for dessert. Baby Girl had a rough time falling asleep. She was overtired and was in a new place. She just cried and cried until she finally fell asleep. Once she was asleep, she slept fine the rest of the night. She did better the next day.

Morgan woke up early Saturday morning, and went fishing with his dad. He caught two good size trouts. We brought them home and had them for dinner on Sunday. We took it easy on Saturday. We were so tired and sore from our adventures the day before. Baby Girl got some really good naps in, which made her a little happier. It was fun to spend time with family. We played games and chatted. We drove home Saturday evening - absolutely exhausted. We put Baby Girl to bed around 7. We unpacked and ate dinner. I wanted to see if we could see the city firework show from our house, but we were too exhausted. I think we were in bed by 9:30! It's pretty pathetic, but that's okay! We'll see fireworks next year! It was a fantastic holiday weekend!

Baby Girl is such a stinking cutie! She is developing so much personality. She's playing games with us. She teases us and laughs about it!  Yesterday, during lunch time, Baby Girl had prunes (yummy). In between each bite, she grabbed her toes and shoved them in her mouth. I tried stopping her. I told her that she can have her toes for dessert, but not until she finished eating. I didn't want to keep cleaning prunes out of between her toes. She was so determined. After EVERY bite in went the toes. It was adorable, so I gave up, and let her suck on her toes in between bites. Of course, I grabbed the camera.

Chalk up another one on the list of Baby Girl's developments. She is officially on the move. On Friday, I was changing Baby Girl's diapers, when she rolled away from me (as she almost always does). Once she was on her tummy, in two big scoots she moved a good foot and a half. I was shocked, "When did you learn how to do that?!" So, I put her on the ground, to see if she could scoot on the floor to get toys. Sure enough, she can move forward. There's a lot of scooting, rocking, rolling and stretching. But she is definitely on the move. I got this video yesterday morning after she woke up. And even today, she is moving more quickly. She has it down. I'm just counting my days until she will officially be crawling. We're excited, but I think it will make watching her even harder!

What a mischievous little girl we have. Somehow, Baby Girl got a hold of the camera. We don't know how. We don't know when. But when we checked the pictures on our camera, we found this adorable picture. Baby Girl must have taken this of herself! We have such a brilliant, adorable baby! I wonder what she will do next. . .

I often think about a part from the movie "Baby Mama". Towards the beginning of the movie, Kate is wanting a baby. Her sister Caroline, has several children. Caroline is telling Kate that motherhood is messy. Then this wonderful dialogue occurs:

Caroline:[holding her son's dirty hand] Is this chocolate or poop? Is this chocolate or poop?

Caroline: [licks son's hand and smiles] It's chocolate!

Kate Holbrook: What if that had been poop?

Motherhood is messy! I love this part and think of it often! This afternoon, after our play date, I sat down to nurse Baby Girl. After she eats, she is so happy! It's adorable. I love playing with her when she's so happy. As I was sitting in my chair, I lifted her up over my head, and Baby Girl spit up all over me. Yes, it got all over my shoulder and neck. Yes, it got on my face. Yes, my mouth was open. It was disgusting. I guess it was my own fault - I shouldn't have been playing so rough when Baby Girl's tummy was so full. Motherhood is very messy.

It's a good thing she's so stinking cute! It makes all the messy moments worth it! This is a picture of her outfit before church yesterday. She has a pair of pink baby Jelly shoes! They are so cute! She's such a doll!

Today, Baby Girl and I had an exciting play date with some friends! Last year, I taught 3rd grade and became friends with a fellow 3rd grade teacher, Britney. We both were first year teachers. We both got pregnant and stopped teaching after the first year. We both had baby girls. We now live several hours away from each other, but still keep in touch. We arranged to meet in Salt Lake for a playdate. My baby (Baby G) is about 6 weeks younger than her baby (Baby H). They are doing a lot of the same things. It's fun to compare what each of our babies are doing. It was a very fun playdate. We walked around the beautiful grounds at Temple Square. We sat on the grass and let our babies play together. Baby H kept playing with our toys, and Baby G kept playing with their toys. Neither one of them are very good at sharing toys. They kept grabbing for whatever toy the other was playing with. Other baby's toys are always more fun to play with.

We took some pictures (of course!). You can see in the picture of our two babies - Baby G has her arm around Baby H! Morgan said Baby G looks like a boy next to Baby H - because of her short hair! They are still super cute together.

We spent several hours walking around the temple grounds, chatting about our babes. We had a nice picnic in the shade. Then Britney and I sat and talked while our babies were napping in their strollers. It was great to get out of the house and spend time with a friend that is in a similar situation as me.

Finally, this afternoon, we loaded up and drove home. Baby Girl finished her nap on the way home. We a fun filled day!

Our Baby Girl has been going to bed at 6:30 or 7:00, and I must admit that I love it! She sleeps for a good 12 hours. I usually check on her after she has fallen asleep. I check to see where she has wiggled to in her crib. I also make sure she hasn't fallen asleep with a blanket wrapped around her face. Last night, I when I checked on her, she was just fine - sleeping near the corner of her crib. Then a couple of hours later, before I went to bed, I checked on her again. Morgan rolls his eyes whenever I do this, but whatever!

This is what I found when I checked on her before I went to bed. She was sleeping on her tummy, propped up on her knees. Hopefully you can tell from the picture - her knees are bent and her bum is sticking out into the air. She's sleeping on top of her blanket. I'm not sure how she rolled like that. Or how she's stayed like that and slept like that. Morgan and I laughed at what a silly baby we have, took a picture, then went to bed. I wonder how long she slept like that. I wonder if her legs started to fall asleep. What an adorable baby we have.

I cannot believe that our Baby Girl is 9 months old already. Its crazy how quickly time passes. She went for her 9 month check up today at the doctors. No immunizations today, thankfully! She did so good! She has cried EVERY time we have been to the doctor. She never liked the scale. She didn't like the doctor poking around. But today she didn't cry at all. They even had to poke her toe to get some blood to test for anemia - and she didn't even fuss. She weighed in at 19 pounds 5 ounces. That's the 50-75%. Three months ago she was in the 75-90% for weight. So, she's starting to slim down a little! She is 28 1/4 inches - which is in the 75%! She's always been in the 50% for height, so now she's getting some height on her! She's gained 13 pounds since birth and grown 10 inches!

The doctor, during her check up, asked a series of questions about her development. I said 'no' a lot more than I ever have before. If you stand her up next to that chair, could she stand there? No. Can she crawl? No. When she's holding two toys, can she bang them together? No. Can she play Patty-Cake? No. Can she wave good-bye? No. Is she saying 'Mamama' or 'Dadadada'? (Finally a) YES!! Is she saying it in reference to you guys? (shoot) No. There were a couple of times I got to say yes. The doctor was impressed that she's sleeping 12 hours at night. She's obviously a healthy eater! She may not be able to do much now - but she can eat and she can sleep! Morgan and I have been joking about how we have a slow baby. We definitely are not concerned about her, neither was the doctor. She's doing well, and is very healthy. That's the most important thing!

Our Baby Girl is growing by leaps and bounds. She is so close to crawling - well she's really close to army crawling. She spends most of her time on her tummy. She kicks her feet, and pushes herself forward with her toes - but it's only a small distance. She reaches with her arms. A couple of nights ago, we put a plate of cookies on the ground in front of her. It was maybe only 6 inches away from her. She kicked, and wiggled and reached and finally got the plate! Morgan rewarded her by giving her a cookie. Oh dear. I don't know if she ate any of it - but she made a big mess out of it. Slobbery cookie crumbs ended up all over Baby Girl and Morgan! 

Then last night, we had some Salt Water taffy. I took a taffy out of the wrapper and gave some to her to suck on. It quickly became slimy and stretched between all of her fingers. Her mouth was full of taffy. We snapped a picture before I fished it all out of her mouth. She seemed to enjoy the sweet taste of it. Our baby is chubby enough, we probably don't need to feed her cookies and candy!

I love the weekends! Honestly, everyday is the same for me. The only difference is Morgan doesn't have to work. He gets to spend the weekends with us! It makes a big difference! Morgan is there to walk to the park with us. It's fun. That's one thing that we did this weekend while we had Morgan home with us. We walked to a local park and went swinging. Baby Girl loves going swinging. We have to keep her from sucking on the swings. Not a very clean thing - and for some reason, she finds it irresistible to put her mouth all over it! What a strange child we have!

but it's totally worth it. Watch out, because in another 13-16 years, our Baby Girl is going to hate me for posting this picture of her, but I think it's so funny. I caught Baby Girl working on filling her diaper. Apparently, it took a lot of work! What a funny pooping face!

We finally took Baby Girl swimming. I've been itching to take her swimming for a few weeks now, and we finally went on Saturday. Our friends have a swimming pool in their apartment complex, so we spent the afternoon swimming with them. Then we had a barbecue afterwords. It was fun to spend time with friends.As we were driving there, we noticed very dark clouds over us. It looked like a storm was rolling in. We went swimming anyway - and it never rained on us. It was kind of cloudy and a little windy, but it was fun. We borrowed a baby floaty from our friends.

Baby Girl was very uncertain about swimming. The wind made it kind of cold, but not bad. She was not relaxed and very tense for the first little bit. She was not sure what this was all about. After a little bit, she loosened right up. She loved the water. Well, she loved trying to drink the water. She spent most of the time leaning over the ring trying to drink the water. What a silly girl. She enjoyed kicking her legs and hitting the top of the water with her hands. It was a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to taking her swimming more often. There is a fantastic kids pool just down the street from our house - we'll have to go there this summer!

Our Baby Girl is beginning to sleep on her side. It's proof of how crazy I am - that I can find such a silly thing to be so cute. Cute enough to take a picture and post a blog about it. I'm sure its an obsession, just deal with it. Her new bed time is around 7:00 - and I love it! She sleeps for a good 11-12 hours. She still takes two good naps - a 2-hour morning nap and 1 1/2 hour afternoon nap. She's always been a good sleeper, which makes and keeps me a happy mom! 

Most Wednesday mornings, Baby Girl and I attend a Play Group at the park. It's a nice park, within walking distance. Today we sat on a blanket under a tree and chatted with some other moms and babes. There are adorable twin boys that are 12 months old that always try to play with Baby Girl. They share toys, Baby Girl tries to pull their hair. I told them today that they need to teach her how to crawl. We also spent time on the swing. Baby Girl likes to swing, but she loves it when I try to tickle her toes as she swings back and forth. The fun day at the park must have tuckered her all out, because she fell asleep on our walk home. I love how she still has a tight grip on her toy, even though she's asleep. What a cutie.

As many of you know, last year we had a pair of Quail living in our backyard. Well, those Quail had babies and this year they are all grown up and now just had babies of their own. We get a kick out of watching them herd along their babies, the father in front, followed by the babies, and mom in the back making sure they don't go astray. The babies look like little new-born chickens as, if you know anything about quail, they don't fly too much and act somewhat like chickens -- only the sound they make is much more annoying. Anyway we got a few snapshots of our Quail family so enjoy.

For Memorial Day weekend, we decided to travel to Sanpete County to attend a Scandinavian Festival. Yes, a Scandinavian festival. I know very little about Scandinavia culture, but Morgan's grandmother is Swedish. I'm learning a little more about it. It was a fun festival with several craft and food booths. It was fun to see all the crafts for sell. The food smelled delicious. We had some famous Sanpete Turkey and piccadillies. Don't know what piccadillies are? Me neither, but they taste really good! They had other booths that sold kettle corn, funnel cakes, snow cones, cotton candy, Navajo tacos. They even had a Viking feast. We ate more than our share of unhealthy foods. It was fun!

We stopped and visited Morgan's family too. Baby Girl had fun playing the piano with Grandma Frame! She was really good at playing a duet with Grandma! Baby Girl did pretty good with new people there. It really depends on her mood, or the time of day, or the person. Sometimes she can be very ornery with new people, and other times she can be okay. I'm looking forward to when she's outgrown this separation anxiety phase! 

I think my baby gets cuter the older she gets. She's definitely keeping me on my toes. She's becoming more and more mobile every day. She can wiggle half way across the room. She scoots backwards while laying on her back. And as she rolls from her tummy to her back and back to tummy, she somehow moves around too. What a silly baby!

Today, Baby Girl is 8 months old. She's now been out of the womb as long as she was in the womb. I was 8 months pregnant when I had her. These last 8 months have been a lot more fun then the 8 months prior to her birth! What a beautiful baby we have!

We have such a silly girl. The last several weeks, she's learned this really cheesy grin. She squints her eyes, wrinkles her nose and puckers her lips into a smile. I don't know where she's learned it, but it's adorable. Can you see her hair in these pictures? She was getting a little bit of static electricity built up, so the little hairs on her head was standing straight up. What a cutie!

She's also found and loves her toes. She always grabs for her toes! I can't believe how flexible she is! She always tries to eat her toes when I'm changing her diaper. I have to pry her little slobbery toes out of her mouth, so I can get the diaper around her leg. It's really cute!

What a week we've had! Our Baby Girl has grown so much in the last week. She's added a lot of new things to her routine this week. First of all, she's decided to like baby food. Starting with bananas last week, she now eats anything I  feed her! I have no idea what changed her mind, but it doesn't matter what it is, she chows it down. Fruits, veggies, it doesn't matter. She now opens her mouth willingly and eats all that I feed her! I first introduced veggies to her 2 months ago, so every day for 2 months, I've tried to feed her baby food with little success. Until suddenly, she's decided to love it! What a silly girl.

Secondly, she's started cutting out some of her naps. She has always slept a lot for the average baby. She was still taking 4 naps a day, until a few weeks ago, when she cut out one of her naps. So, she took a morning, afternoon and evening nap. The last few days, she's started cutting out her evening nap. But the problem is that she's still been fussy as she's adjusting to being awake for so long. Now, her schedule is like most babies - just a morning and afternoon nap.

And last, but not least, she's discovered that she can scream. This is more voice exploration than anything. She just likes to yell very loudly. We went to WalMart a couple of days ago, and as we walked through out the store, Baby Girl just hollered away. I just whispered a shhhhh, and tried to avoid all the staring eyes from other customers. It's fun to hear her voice though.

. . . . playing on the couch. Luckily, neither of these little monkeys were hurt today. Baby Girl decided that she liked bananas! (Maybe she saw her stuffed friend enjoying them!). Baby food has been an uphill battle with our little one. We have one picky little eater. She eats rice cereal just fine. She loves puffs, crackers and bread. She downed sweet potatoes two days in a row, but then I tried to give them to her a week later, she refused to eat them. So feeding time usually consists of me force feeding my child about 5 baby bites. The first bite, she opens her mouth willingly, then she immediately spits the food back out. The second bite, I can get it in pretty easy. Then from there on out - her lips are sealed shut. We tried bananas several weeks ago, and she did not like them. Then I tried again a couple of days ago. The first day, she wouldn't eat any willingly. Then yesterday, she decided to like them! She ate half a tub of baby food. Then again today she ate the 2nd half. Yay! Feeding time is so much more enjoyable when she opens her mouth willingly. She starts waving her arms and kicking her feet because she's so excited for another bite! If only she would do that for everything I feed her! What a silly monkey!

We had a nice weekend. This is a picture of our Baby Girl before church on Sunday. She is always so stinking cute. We have church at 1:00, which is right during her afternoon nap. We had to wake her up to go to church. She did pretty good, considering her nap was cut short. She was pretty content to play during Sacrament meeting. We had to continue switching between Morgan and me and the floor. I had her sitting up on the floor playing with toys. She's really good at sitting up, but she topples over sometimes. And of course, during a talk about being reverent during Sacrament Meeting, Baby Girl nose dives into the carpet. I didn't catch her in time, and she lands head first onto the ground. So, as I rush my screaming baby out of the chapel, the speaker talks about how we need to show patience for crying babies during church meetings. She wasn't hurt (although you wouldn't be able to tell from her screamings). It took just a couple of minutes to calm her down. Only the beginning of crying outbursts from our adorable little girl.

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous! I LOVE it! The past couple of days, Baby Girl and I have been going for walks. We've walked over to the park and have gone swinging. She seems to like her stroller. She likes just looking around at everything! This  picture was taken after our trip to the park today. She's such a cutie! 

I love watching Morgan as a father. Putting aside the jokes about how he can't wait for Baby Girl to be old enough to do the dishes, he's so good with her. She lights up whenever she sees him. She definitely knows who her daddy is. The first week of her life, Morgan probably changed more diapers than I did. He was very good about it. Then he went back to work - and I took over as primary diaper changer. Then as she got older, her diapers got very stinky. Then she started eating solids, and it was like the sweet potatoes went right through her. So, with that all in consideration, Morgan always weasels out of changing her diaper. He's tried a couple of times, but can't ever finish! Until this weekend. Sunday morning she woke up with a poopy diaper. She hadn't pooped for 3 full days, so this was a whopper! I was getting Baby Girl's bath ready and told Morgan that he could be getting her ready for a bath - which means changing her diaper! I didn't expect him to do it(based on past experience). Then I heard a loud "eeeeuuwwwe". I walk in her room, and I see Morgan with a blanket wrapped around his face to protect him from the stench of Baby Girl's diaper. And he changed her diaper! I had to grab a camera as proof! I'm so proud of him! Actually, now he has a greater appreciation for what I do on a daily basis.

Baby Girl has discovered a new sound to make. She now makes a D sound. So, now she says "da-da-da-da". Of course, Morgan chalks this up to her saying "da-da" before "ma-ma". He claims that she's always talking about him when she says it. I just smile and roll my eyes. I won't mention all the times she says it to me - when he's not around. That's okay, it's still cute to hear her say it.

Actually, it's just water. With the encouragement from my dad, Baby Girl was drinking water through a straw. She likes water, and always grabs for more. She did a pretty good job with a straw. It didn't take her very long to figure out how a straw works. This picture was taken about a week ago - and I've only tried a couple more times since then. I'll have to get one of those sippy cups with a straw for her.

Over the weekend, we went on our first hike since our family of 2 became a family of 3. Morgan and I have been on a few hikes in our days. It's an activity that we both enjoy. We have a Baby Backpack that we loaded Baby Girl into. She seemed to enjoy hiking. It was a beautiful weekend and the weather was beautiful. We just went for a short hike to a rock climbing wall. Morgan's been itching to go rock climbing. We went to an Indoor Rock climbing wall on Friday (my 2nd time rock climbing) for a date - thanks to Morgan's family for babysitting! It's fun, and now Morgan's going to try and get me to go climbing outside on a real wall! Our hiking excursion went very well, and we'll have to go hiking more often as the weather gets warmer.

After the hike, we went to Temple Square to see the blooming flowers. It was beautiful weather, and the temple grounds were gorgeous. We didn't stay for very long - maybe 20 minutes is all. Baby Girl was getting really tired - she needed a nap. So after taking a couple of cute pictures, we headed back home. Baby Girl slept the whole way home. I enjoy being on the Temple Grounds in Salt Lake, but unfortunately to say - the Sister Missionaries drive me crazy! As a former Sister Missionary, I appreciate their work. And on a slow day - I can see that they want to talk to everyone they can. In the 20 minutes we were there, I think we were approached by 5 different sets of Sister Missionaries! We didn't have any quiet time together as a family. I just wanted to spend a few quiet moments on the beautiful temple grounds with my family. Instead, we had to make small talk with the Sisters - explaining that we didn't have time to watch any movies, that we were members of the LDS church, and we know that we have the opportunity to share the gospel with our non-member friends. I enjoy talking to missionaries, but when a new set approaches you every 4 minutes, it gets very old! But the flowers were very beautiful!

A few nights ago, after Baby Girl's bath, I decided to comb her hair into a Mohawk. She doesn't have that much hair, but it's starting to grow and thicken up a little. It's still undecided what color her hair really is. I think it's a light brown. Sometimes it looks blonde. Sometimes it looks red. We'll have to see what color her hair decides to be when she gets a little more grown in. Here are a couple of the pictures I took. Doesn't she look like she has a little attitude? What a cutie! 

The day has finally come. It actually came sooner than I expected. Baby Girl can roll over from her back to her tummy. She has never really liked being on her tummy. And even now - I try to get her to roll over sometimes, and she just refuses. But we captured it on video for you all to see! Enjoy.

This is the view of my backyard from my kitchen window. Yes, it is April 15th, and it is snowing. As I was looking out the window, I could see all the newly budding trees now covered in inches of snow. So, in response to this gloomy - feels like winter- day, I decided to make chocolate chip cookies. The falling snow doesn't seem so bad, when I'm inside - wrapped in a blanket, eating fresh from the oven cookies and drinking a tall glass of milk.

On a side note - Baby Girl decided that she really can roll from her back to her tummy! She can only do it a couple of times before she gets tired. It's a lot of work! I tried capturing it on film, but she got camera shy! So, now she can roll from her back to her tummy and her tummy to her back! When she's on her tummy, she always rolls to her left. And when she's on her back, she always rolls to her left. Back and forth, back and forth. We'll see if she figures out how to roll to move across the room!

This is the first year that the Easter Bunny has visited our house since we've been married! What a happy day! I've missed the Easter Bunny! I get excited about all the kid things, and Morgan always rolls his eyes at me! But now, we both can get excited with our Baby Girl! It will only get more and more fun as the years go on!

Our Baby Girl woke up at 7:00 on Easter morning. She's little enough, that she didn't notice the Easter basket left there by the Easter Bunny. She ate and got her diaper changed and went right back down for a nap. After about an hour nap, she woke up again - all ready to see what the Easter Bunny left for her. These are pictures of our Baby Girl with her basket and the toys that came in them. She was so excited about it all! Most of her toys (like everything else she can get her hands on) went directly into her mouth! But that's okay, because most of the toys were teething toys, so that's their purpose. And she even got her own cell phone! This was a gift from Great Grandma Frame. I think she will really enjoy it in a few more months.

We had a fantastic Easter together as a family! I think next year will be even more fun!

Today we went to the Annual Frame Family Easter Party at Morgan's grandparents' house. This is a fun family tradition. We had a nice lunch where we ate way too much. The food was really good. I made cupcakes that looked like birds' nests. They turned out really cute. After everyone ate, we had an Easter Egg Hunt. This is also a family tradition, and can sometimes get out of control! This happened in several stages. Stage 1: the eggs are hidden by Aunt Linda and Aunt Christine. The little kids get to go find the obvious eggs. Pictures are taken, everyone is proud at how cute the kids are! Stage 2: all the other "kids" get to find the rest of the eggs. This is where most people get to participate since the youngest in this group of 'kids' is 16 years old! Stage 3: After all the eggs are found, then all the 'kids' (or anyone who wants to) get to hide the eggs again so Aunt Linda, Aunt Christine, and Morgan's mom Lisa can find them. This is where it gets out of control! The eggs are usually hidden in impossible places and they competitively run around trying to find the most eggs. It's a fun tradition!

This year, we were actually involved with Stage 1 of this Easter Egg Hunt. Here are the pictures of our Baby Girl at her first Easter Egg Hunt. She found 3 eggs! She didn't understand what was going on, but that's okay. We pretty much plopped her in front of a couple of eggs and took her picture! By the last egg, she was enjoying playing with the egg by putting it in her mouth. It was a fun day. She still is having a hard time around new people sometimes. It depends on her mood. Sometimes and with some people - she can be a very happy baby. Other times, if she's tired, hungry, or just plain ornery - she cries unless you're her Mommy or Daddy! 

Today, Baby Girl is 7 months old. Yes, that's right. Isn't it crazy?! She's so much fun! She's growing like crazy. On our home scale, she is 1/10 of an ounce away from being 19 pounds. Her doctor told us at her last two checkups that her weight should be slowing down, but I still haven't seen anything like that. Another exciting development: our Baby Girl is now on the move. Is she crawling? NO. Is she rolling? NO. Yesterday, I went to get her out of her crib after her morning nap, and I found her at the very top of the crib - with her head up against the padding. When I laid her down to sleep, she was near the bottom of the crib. How did she get there?

We have such a strange child! As you can tell from the video, she is starting to move. I don't think she moves like this to get anywhere specific yet. I think she's just moving to move. I've tried getting her to move to get something, and she hasn't grasped it yet. I think she's just wiggling around. It's only a matter of time! 

We're still dragging along with solids. It seems to be a struggle to get her to eat everyday. A couple of days ago, Baby Girl just downed the sweet potatoes I fed her. When she's ready for another bite, she sticks out her tongue. Then I touch the spoon to her tongue and then she opens wide for me! It's so funny. Then we switched to a different veggie, and her lips are sealed shut. We've even tried bananas and applesauce, and she still doesn't show much interest. I'm not too worried that she's not eating. As you can see from her fat rolls, she's not under-fed. I just wish that feeding time was a little easier! Today, I got some puffs at the store. They are these little grain snacks - they look like cereal - that dissolve quickly in the mouth. I got some banana flavored puffs. Baby Girl did not know what to think of it at first. As you can see from the pictures, BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER shots. She quickly decided that she loves them! At first I was checking her mouth to make sure they were swallowed before I put another one in there. I realized that her chubby cheeks don't allow her to hide any food! So, as soon as she would swallow one, she would stick out her tongue - telling me that she's ready for another one. What a silly girl!

I am in no mood to be productive today. It's a blah day - where I don't want to get anything accomplished. Baby Girl has spoiled me with sleep! She's been in the habit of sleeping until 7ish every morning, so when I heard her at 6:00 a.m. I moaned and rolled back over, hoping she would fall back asleep. Morgan, who was already awake and getting ready for work, went and rescued her. By rescuing, I mean, getting her from her crib so she'll stop fussing, and bring her into my room and lay her in bed with me, then he goes and continues getting ready for work. So, now I'm awake, and pull myself out of bed so I can feed Baby Girl at about 6:22 a.m. After her morning feeding, she usually goes right back to sleep for another nap - which is wonderful. This allows me to eat breakfast and take a shower. After about a 45 minute nap, she's up again. I feed her rice cereal for breakfast. Then I throw her into the bathtub. Afterwards, another feeding, and another slightly longer nap (about an hour this time). I know that nap time is the only time I have to get things done, and instead of being productive, I curl up on the couch and read my book. I think about the pile of dirty dishes in my kitchen sink that need to be washed, but I don't care enough to stop reading and get up to wash them.

Before I know it, Baby Girl is awake again. We play on the floor for a little while. Baby Girl is getting a lot more wiggly. I think she's getting slightly frustrated because she wants to be mobile, but she can't quite figure it out. When she's on her back, she arches her back and pushes her bum up with her legs. That doesn't really get her anywhere. I've tried (several times) to show her how to roll from her back to her tummy, but she's not interested in that. I try to encourage her to do the army crawl, but she gives up too easily and rolls from her tummy to her back. Meanwhile, I am enjoying my time with an immobile child, because I know its only a matter of days before she'll figure it out and be on the move.

Now it was lunch time. I tried everything I could imagine to get Baby Girl to open her mouth to allow a small spoonful of green goo to enter her mouth. She's not a dumb child, I wouldn't eat that stuff either. I tried everything from singing songs, the airplane swoop approach, and I even pretended to eat it to show her yummy it was. I think she could tell I was just pretending, because it didn't work. It's like she knew, somehow, that if I had a mouthful of that green stuff, I wouldn't be smiling and saying 'yummy!'

It was in the middle of trying to force feed my child vegetables, that I realized that Baby Girl was slightly preoccupied with something else. Suddenly I heard a loud rumble, then I smelled immediately that she needed a diaper change. As I was transporting my stinky baby from her high chair, to her changing area, I felt a wetness on my arm. To my dismay, her dirty diaper turned into a dirty outfit. I was shocked at how much poop there was outside of her diaper. It was disgusting! As I was trying to get her poopy clothes off of her, trying not to get poop in her hair, I realized it would be easier to just throw her in the tub (again). Baby Girl was delighted with a second bath in a matter of hours. After she was cleaned (again), I threw all her dirty clothes in the washing machine (I am SOO glad that we don't have to go to the laundry mat anymore!).

It was just after twelve o'clock, Baby Girl was now her in her second outfit for the day. I also had to change my shirt. Time for another nursing session. Now, Baby Girl is taking another nap. It's only a matter of time before she'll wake up, and I'll get to play with her. I should be more motivated to clean my house or prepare something for dinner tonight. Instead, I'm blogging, then I'll probably go back to reading my book. And when Morgan gets home from work tonight, he'll notice that our house looks exactly the same as it did when he left (maybe even a little messier), and for dinner we'll just have left-over Ham Fried Rice (from yesterday's dinner), and I'll apologize for not doing more. His response is why I love him so much, he'll smile and kiss me and say "That's okay." And it is okay!

Our Baby Girl makes the silliest sounds. As you can see in this video, she has learned this weird noise. She makes it when she's having a good time. She also makes that noise when she's laughing. This is what happens when I give her a ride on my shoulders. She makes this noise repeatedly while she tries to eat my hair! It's so funny. She does this the entire time she is on my shoulders. What a silly girl.

Look at our silly girl! Isn't she so adorable? This is her new face. She always pulls in her lower lip and sucks on it. I wonder if she's teething. I've wondered if she's been teething for a few weeks now, but still no teeth have surfaced. She has her fussy times. She seems to be drooling A TON. And she's been sucking on her lower lip. So, while we are waiting for those teeth, we'll just enjoy the funny faces she pulls.

Yesterday, Baby Girl and I got home from running an errand. I put her down on the floor still in her car seat while I went to the other room to do something. When I came back into our living room, I saw our Baby Girl playing this game! She did this over and over and over for several minutes! At least she can entertain herself! What a silly girl.

I love the weekends. For me, every day of the week is pretty much the same. I don't get a day off. But Morgan gets the day off to be home with us. Most of the time, we don't do anything special or different, it's just nice to be together. On Saturday, the weather was gorgeous! We did some work around our house. Our yard needs some serious attention this Spring. Hopefully we will be able to get a lawn put in this Spring. That afternoon, we went for a walk to the park and to get some 48 cent ice cream cones. It felt good to be outside in the nice weather. Our Baby Girl is now wearing 12 month clothing. Oh dear, she's growing so fast! She has some adorable clothing though!

Then Sunday, the weather wasn't so nice. A storm was rolling in. It was quite a bit colder and cloudy and kind of windy. It was a nice lazy day. I made cinnamon rolls in the morning. Mmmmm, Mmmmm, Good! These are some pictures of our adorable daughter in her church outfit! Morgan and Baby Girl have coordinating outfits! After church, we lounged around. Morgan built a fire in our fireplace. It was nice to sit next to a warm fire and read a book, while it was trying to rain outside. I LOVE lazy weekends spent together as a family!

We are SOOO excited for Spring! Can you tell?

The weather is supposed to be 72 degrees! We broke out the shorts! Baby Girl's chubby little legs look so cute coming out of colorful shorts.

Here is our baby food update: Baby Girl still doesn't know what to think about any of it! It takes a lot of convincing and a lot of funny faces to get her to eat her vegetables! We've tried carrots, sweet potatoes, and peas. She does NOT like carrots. She started to tolerate sweet potatoes. We tried peas today. As you can see from the picture, she pulled some pretty funny faces. She ate peas a lot better than she ate the others. I'm not sure if she likes the taste better, or if she's just getting used to eating baby food now. Maybe a little of both.

Yesterday, Baby Girl and I went to a Play Group. We went to a local park. I put Baby Girl in one of the kiddie swings. I wasn't sure if she would like it or not - and she LOVES it! She started giggling! She's so stinking cute! So, today, we went back to the park - with my camera (of course) for another swing ride. She started off giggling, but she wouldn't smile for the camera. There was a kid swinging right next to us that captured her full attention. It's been beautiful weather! I've loved it! You can see Baby Girl's sun hat. It's my attempt at protecting her bald spot from the sun! I think this summer will be filled with a lot of trips to the park!

Our Baby Girl is making progress! It's so fun to watch her! Baby Girl has never been a fan of tummy time. I still try to put her on her tummy for a little while every day. Although she no longer hates it, she tolerates it. She still rolls over rather quickly. I try to distract her with a toy so she won't roll over so quickly. The past couple of days, she's been pushing herself up onto her knees! When she does this, she digs her face into the ground. She can only lift one half of her body at a time. When she gets up on her legs, her front is down. When her front is up, her back is down. She does this for a short time, then gives up and rolls over. This is a short video clip of what I've described.

She'll be crawling before we know it! She's such a cutie!

Just a quick St. Patrick's Day Greeting! Hope you weren't caught without any green! Hope your day was magical!

For our Family Night this week, we decided to go to a local Science Museum. It's close to home, interesting, and most importantly FREE! I Love it! They have tons of animals on display. I was thinking it would be a good place for a field trip. It was very educational. I saw a lot of animals that I have never heard of before. They even had a live show about reptiles. Baby Girl liked the beginning. You can see her touching the moose - (she must not have seen the DO NOT TOUCH signs everywhere!).  It didn't take long for her to get all tuckered out and sleep the rest of the time. Morgan thought that some of the displays looked like some houses in his hometown - lots of dead animals mounted on the walls.

Here are some other pictures of our adventure. You can see me being attacked by a scary lion. Morgan is getting eaten by a hippo. Baby Girl is sound asleep. It was a wonderful evening spent together as a family.

Today is Baby Girl's half birthday. That is right, she is 6 months old. It's amazing how quickly time flies. She's so much fun to have in our lives! She's smiling and laughing all the time. She can roll from her tummy to her back with ease. She gets into position to roll from her back to her tummy, then she realizes that it would put her on her tummy and she doesn't want to be there. She's starting to raise her arms when she wants to be lifted up. She is becoming a pro at sitting up on her own, but she's still pretty wobbly. She's starting to eat solid foods and drink from a sippy cup. She knows who her mommy and daddy are and misses them when she doesn't see them! She loves the game of Peek-a-Boo! She loves to splash during bath time. She has the prettiest blue eyes! And her arms and legs are covered in fat rolls! This is my beautiful baby girl! We Love You!

Yesterday, Baby Girl got to taste another solid besides Rice Cereal. She's been doing so well with Rice Cereal, and she's turning 6 months this week, I thought we should start her on some vegetables. My grandmother gave me a Baby Food Mill, to make my own baby food. So, I thought I would try this out! It was so easy, and so much cheaper than ready made baby food. I made a big batch of carrots and they are in my freezer for ready use. I think I'll try to make pea baby food next. Here are a couple of pictures of Baby Girl trying carrots for the first time. She did not know what to think. It's definitely different than rice cereal. She did pretty good. She only had a few bites for the first time.

Last weekend, we took our first over night trip since Baby Girl was born. Traveling with a baby is a lot more work than just traveling with the two of us. But it was a fun and successful trip! We traveled to Idaho for my little brother's homecoming talk. We headed out Saturday morning. We had to stop halfway there for Baby Girl to get a diaper change and eat a little. This is a cute picture of her in the car during our little pit stop. She slept most of the way, which makes traveling so nice. It's about a 4 hour drive. When we got there, everyone was so excited to see our cute baby - and she just cried for all of them! She's such a stinker. She was okay when Morgan or I would hold her. She would also cry when they would try to talk to her. I was worried that she would have a hard time sleeping, because she wasn't in her crib. We borrowed a Pack N Play - playpen from a family in our ward, for her to sleep in. She slept beautifully! She fell right to sleep, just like normal. By Sunday, she was a lot more used to people than she was on Saturday. At church, (in the ward that I grew up in), all the members came to say 'hello' and see our precious baby! She did really well. After church, at the luncheon, she even let other people hold her and talk to her. If we would have stayed another day, she probably would have been very comfortable with all the new people. So, this summer, we'll have to take a few trips! It was fun, and we don't do it very often!

Here are some family pictures that we took since we were all there. Baby Girl was not very happy for picture time! Oh well. She's still cute - even when she's crying mad. You can see me and my two younger brothers. Yes, I'm the oldest, but the smallest. I try to pick on them still, and tease them - but they are both so much bigger than me. I lose that battle every time! It was fun to see them! Welcome Home Brad!

Today is Morgan’s and my anniversary. We have been married for 3 years. On one hand it feels like an eternity, and on the other I can’t believe it’s already been 3 years. If you ask Morgan, he’ll say its more like an eternity. I was just reflecting on our relationship and being very grateful. We’ve had it very easy. Not to say that marriage is easy. It takes a lot or work and patience and love, but it’s so wonderful. We’ve been able to learn and grow together.

Things I’ve learned about Morgan: 1) Don’t ever ask him anything while he’s busy doing something (he’ll never hear it). 2) He is not a picky eater. He will eat anything. It makes cooking dinner very nice. 3) He is very generous. He has been known to double our dinner tab, by leaving an outrageous tip. He gets after me for buying presents for people when they are on sale, or super cheap! 4) He’s learned that “I’m sorry” and “I love you” are the most important phrases!

I love that I have someone to share this life with. We have similar tastes, personalities and goals. We work next to each other. We laugh with each other. Now, we get to be parents together. I look forward to what our marriage will be like in 5 years or 15 years or 50 years. I love you, Morgan, more than words can describe!

Our Baby Girl is quite a silly girl. It is fun to see her personality shine through! I think we have are going to have a handful with this one! This is a picture of our adorable girl with a Binky in her mouth. She normally does NOT take a Binky. When she was younger - she would take it about half the time. Sometimes she would, sometimes she wouldn't. The older she got, she eventually would never take it - so I gave up trying. Well, this week, I gave it to her to play with. She would bring it to her mouth, like she does with everything she gets her hand onto. I watched her as she figured out how to put the nipple part into her mouth and she just started sucking - except it was upside down. I went and helped her turn it right side up, and she just was sucking like a pro. She won't let me put it in her mouth, I have to hand it to her, then she has to put it in her mouth. She still plays with it just as much as she sucks on it, but it's still so funny.

Also, notice her feet in this picture. They are crossed at the ankles. Just like a little person, she's kicking back, relaxing and crossing her feet. I noticed that she was laying in her crib with her feet crossed. Then again in this picture.

Our Baby Girl is growing like crazy. I think I've said that every day for the last 5 1/2 months. It's amazing. She is getting so tall and so heavy. This is a picture of our Baby on Sunday, before church. She looks so big on our Love Sac, compared to how tiny she used to be. At church, she got to go to Primary for the first time! Morgan and I were asked to substitute for the 8 and 9 year old class. We only had 3 kids, and they were so good. This was the same age that I taught in school last year. Morgan had prepared a wonderful lesson, and I kept interrupting with additional comments. Baby Girl had a fun time until the last 5-10 minutes - when it was time for her to eat. It was a fun experience - but we're not hoping to get called to the Primary any time soon. We've dodged it for 3 years now - we'll see how long we can hold out! 

Yesterday, I bought a sippy cup for Baby Girl. In the last week or two, I've started giving her a little bit of water from a small plastic cup. She loves it! I don't know if she loves the water, or just the big kid cup - but she guzzles it! So, I thought a sippy cup would be slightly less messy (she drools a lot of the water when she drinks from the cup). She did a really good job. She's growing so big. Next week we're going to introduce more solids than just rice cereal. I'm sure more pictures will be coming! So, stay tuned.

Our Baby Girl is continuing to develop and grow! It is so fun to watch her. She now weighs 17 pounds 6 ounces. She is such a happy baby, always laughing and smiling. Another mark in her development is that she now knows when I am not there with her. She now screams and cries whenever someone, other than me or Morgan, holds her. Sometimes, all a person has to do is talk to her and try to get her to smile and she starts screaming. Over the last week, she's seen a lot of family. Baby Girl screamed for all of them. My dad, Morgan's mom, my mom and step-dad, my brothers: all made her scream. She stops crying when I hold her, so I'm pretty sure we have a major Mama's Girl on our hands. I am home with her all day every day, of course she trusts me! We don't get many visitors, so when we do see new people - she's not used to it. So, if anyone wants to come visit so we can get Baby Girl used to company, you are more than welcome to come visit us.

This week, my brother came home from his mission to Chile. This hat was a souvenir for Baby Girl. Doesn't she look adorable in it?

Instead of going to bed last night Baby Girl decided that it was a Friday night and she deserved to stay up and play with Mom and Dad. She had so much fun that she could not contain herself and started laughing -- it was really cute. Jen had the camera handy so enjoy the short video of our Baby Girl laughing.

Well, (heaven help us), we are trying to do Family Home Evening on Monday nights. Last night, we decided to exercise. The local University has an indoor track. Of course we had to get dressed for it. Even Baby Girl was sporting a jogging outfit. Her outfit is completely pointless for a baby to have, but absolutely adorable! I love it! So, we loaded Baby Girl in her stroller and went and walked. It's a pretty nice track. We walked a whole mile! Along the track, they have vending machines with candy bars and soda pop. Every time we made the lap, we joked about stopping to get a snack. We went around the track 5 times, so if we stopped for a treat every time we passed it - we would have actually gained more calories than we would have burned. It's a good thing we resisted the temptation and kept walking. Baby Girl seemed to enjoy her stroller ride. It was a nice activity that we could do as a family.

 What a wonderful Valentine's weekend. We had a snowy Saturday. It was nice to sit home all day in our warm house and watch the snow storm outside. This is a cute picture of our Baby Girl sitting on our Love Sac looking out the window at all the snow.

Our adorable baby has learned a new game that she happens to find soo funny. She keeps doing it and it would drive me crazy if she wasn't so stinking cute. When she's eating, she latches on for just a second then pulls away, looks at me and laughs. The more I urge her to eat, the more she laughs. Then she latches on again and almost immediately pulls away and laughs. She eventually gets tired of the game, or hungry enough, that she stops playing and finishes eating. Most of the time, it's adorable, but sometimes I just need her to eat! On Saturday, I needed her to finish eating right before we had visitors. On Sunday, she kept doing this during church, when I wanted to hurry and feed her and get back to the meetings. It really is adorable.

I was telling Morgan that our little baby is definitely a Frame Baby. I'm trying to get her to do something that she needs to do. She knows she's going to have to do it eventually, but she's got to give me a hard time about it anyway. Does that sound familiar Lisa?

Yesterday, Baby Girl turned 5 months old. It is so hard to believe how quickly time passes. She's growing so big! She's now wearing 6-9 month clothing and she has so many cute outfits! So here are her outfits from the last couple of days. She's such an adorable baby! 

Baby Girl is huge now! She is growing so much. We were gifted a very nice scale, so we are able to weigh our Baby Girl. She now weighs 16 lbs 5 oz. That is a whole 1.1 pound heavier than she was 3 weeks ago. I tried measuring how tall she was - but that's a little more difficult. I think she's 25 1/2 inches - which is one full inch taller than 3 weeks ago. She's transitioning from her 3-6 month clothes into her 6-9 month clothes. The 6-9 months are still a little big on her. But she has so many cute outfits. She wore this cute levi skirt to church yesterday. She's such a cutie. A major THANK YOU to those of you who contribute to her wardrobe! We greatly appreciate it!

This is Baby Girl in her bouncy chair that she got for Christmas. She's able to sit in it and play with the toys. She concentrates so hard when she's playing with the toys. It's fun to watch her grow and develop. What a fun age!

Unlike Morgan's most recent blog posting, I will document true events that our Baby Girl really has accomplished! In the last few days, she's started doing so many new things. And it's so much fun! She is absolutely adorable!

1. On Sunday, Baby Girl officially started laughing. For a while now, when she's super happy, she'll let out a "haaaaaa". But this time it was a full on baby giggle and it's the cutest thing ever! Hopefully, someday, we'll catch it on film. I had her on my lap and I was bouncing her - giving her a horsey ride and she LOVED it!
2. Baby Girl has been grabbing toys for a while now, but they always had to be put directly in front of her. Now, she is starting to reach for things to grab them. I need to watch her a little better now, because she grabs for anything within her reach. Several times, she has reached my face and ripped off my glasses!
3. Last, but not least, Baby Girl is rolling over! You should have seen Morgan's and my reaction when she rolled over for the first time last night. You would have thought she won the Nobel Prize! We were soo excited and cheering her on! Of course, we grabbed the camera!

With Baby Girl rolling over, I think Tummy Time will be impossible now. She's never really liked being on her tummy, and now she's figured out that she doesn't have to stay on her tummy. She is on her tummy for about 2 seconds before she rolls over and is back on her back. We are very proud, first-time parents!

So now that Baby Girl has this talking thing down we don't know what to expect from our genius baby. Well, we snuck into the kitchen Saturday morning (she had already dressed herself and prepared breakfast)and found Baby Girl reading from Websters Dictionary. She didn't see us so we hurry and grabbed the camera to take this shot. I was a bit heavy footed, after all it was Saturday morning, and tried to sneak around from the other direction to get a picture but she saw me and put on her innocent baby face which looked like she didn't know how she got there or what she was doing.

Her extraordinary talent obviously comes from dear old Dad, I just hope she doesn't try to take over the world before I do because her plans are so much better than mine. Poor mommy who has to put up with all this world domination talk, she really outsmarts all of us when it comes to running this house

I've received a couple of requests for more pictures of Baby Girl. We really haven't had anything too exciting happen this week. Baby Girl is sleeping so well! She's been sleeping for 10 hours each night. One night, she even slept 12 hours! She's such a good sleeper. When she wakes up in the morning, she is so happy. She's adorable. So, here are a couple of pictures. Her smiley face just makes me smile too!

Yesterday, I discovered that Baby Girl LOVES 'Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes'. It's so cute. She doesn't really laugh yet. When she gets really happy, her mouth turns from a smile to a wide open mouth. Sometimes she lets out a "haaaaa".  This is what happened when we were singing "Head & Shoulders". She loved it when I would touch her head, and went through the eyes, ears, mouth and nose. Morgan caught some of it on film. You can see her wide open mouth smile! She's so stinking cute!

Months ago, I got tickets to the Draper LDS Temple Open House. I thought it would be something fun we could do as a family. So, on Saturday, we traveled to Draper, Utah to look in the new temple. It was not a very uplifting experience. The building is beautiful, and I would have enjoyed it so much more if it wasn't surrounded of hours of waiting before and waiting hours after. I don't exaggerate when I say that it took us 4 hours to walk through a building that should have only taken 35 minutes. We had to park at a church a little ways away. We waited in a line that led us to the cultural hall. Then we waited in the cultural hall until it was time to more to the Primary room to watch a short film. Then they told us that we were going to load a bus, but they loaded us into another classroom to wait. Then they moved us back to the cultural hall to wait to load the bus. Finally we were loaded on a big stage coach bus and bussed up to the temple. By this time it was an hour and a half into our tour. Walking through the temple was beautiful. It was fairly well moving, except a couple of times when we were stalled in line. The tour ended at a chapel just next door to the temple where they had refreshments. We took a time out to feed Baby Girl and change her diaper. Then we got in yet another line to load the bus. This was ridiculous. It took about another hour before we were able to load the bus. There was entirely too many people. They were having problems with the busses making it up and down the hills.

Baby Girl was a champ through the whole thing. She was getting fussy at the church when we were waiting to load the bus to go to the temple, but she loved the bus ride. She looked out the window and was completely still and relaxed. She was really good while we walked through the temple. They gave us a pamphlet about the temple, that she liked to hold and look at. There was a picture of the temple and a picture of Jesus that she kept looking at - and ultimately tried to put in her mouth! Half way through the temple, she fell asleep, which was very nice. If we were to do it again, we would not attend the Open House at all. We would wait a couple of months and simply attend a Temple Session without Baby Girl.

At Baby Girl's 4 month check up, her doctor told us to start introducing her to solids so she can get used to the textures. She won't have solids as a main part of her diet until 6 months. The doc told us that she might not be ready yet, but we can try. So today - we tried. We prepared a little Rice Cereal for her. It was funny. She didn't know what to do with it. We gave her a little spoonful and it just stayed in her mouth. I kind of expected her to push it out with her tongue, but she didn't. She gave us some pretty funny faces. For the most part, more went down than came back out, so we'll call it a success. If we give her just a tiny amount every day, she might be ready by the time she's 6 months. It takes our Baby Girl a long time to get adjusted to new things. She was 5 weeks old before she stopped screaming when we changed her diaper. She was almost 4 months when she stopped crying during bath time. So, we just need to give her plenty of time to adjust to something new.  

I love being a mother. I have always loved children. I would love holding other people's babies and dream of when I could have my own. Inevitably, the baby would cry and I would hand them back over to their mother and the child would stop crying. I longed for the time when a baby would stop crying when I held them. And now, I have a baby of my own. I love being a mother. I love how Baby Girl smiles so big when I go get her from her crib after nap time. I love how she turns to me when she sees or hears me. I love how she grabs my finger with her chubby little hand. I love when she 'talks' back to me when I talk to her.

The most frequent advice I have received as a new mother is to cherish these moments because they grow up so fast. I honestly try to enjoy my time with Baby Girl. Sometimes I have to tell myself that it's okay the dishes didn't get done today. It's okay if the house is a mess. I would rather spend my time playing with my daughter, reading to my daughter, talking to my daughter than I would cleaning my house. When Morgan comes home for lunch and I'm still in my pajamas and the house is just as messy - it's okay, because I got to spend time with my baby. Morgan is so good to understand. I love being a full time mother!

Here are some more pictures of our Adorable Baby Girl. I was having trouble posting so many pictures on one blog entry, so here are the rest that I wanted to share.

I think we might have one very spoiled baby! She's such a doll though!

Yesterday, Baby Girl and I traveled to visit my sister, Stef. It was a fun play date. We took Baby Girl to Grandpa Mike's work so he could show off 'His Baby'. All of the employees stopped working to gush over how adorable my baby girl is! Then we had to go to Grandma Kristy's work to show off. Once again, another round of people gushing at my baby! I'm glad that we're not the only ones that find Baby Girl the cutest baby on the planet! And it wouldn't matter if we were the only ones, it's so much fun to have a baby around. She keeps me busy and entertained!

This morning, she was adorable. (She's always adorable!) I was getting her ready for a bath, but I decided to take some pictures of her first. She was smiling like crazy!

Yesterday, Baby Girl turned 4 months old. Today was her four month check up with the doctor and more immunizations. She doesn't like the doctor's office. She doesn't like having to take her clothes off or laying on the scale or on the paper covered bench or the cold stethoscope or the strange people poking her. She did pretty good considering all of that. Morgan was able to come with us this time, so I didn't have to be alone while our  Baby Girl was being poked. It really wasn't that bad. She screamed really hard during the whole ordeal, but she was calmed down and fine by the time we were ready to leave.

She's growing like a weed! She was 24 1/2 inches long. That puts her in the 50 percentile. She's been average height at every check up. Her head size is 42 cm. and her weight is 15 pounds 4 ounces. For her head size and weight, she is in the 75-90 percentile. The doctor seems to think that her weight gain will start to slow down when she's about 6 months old. She's as healthy as can be! That's always good news.

These are some pictures we took of her yesterday before church. This dress is too big for her, but I thought it would keep her warmer than her other dresses. Plus, it's a softer material, maybe more comfortable for her. She was great during church. She slept through all of Sunday School and all of Relief Society.

We are pretty much out of control when it comes to taking pictures of our Baby Girl. It's ridiculous when we look at all of the pictures we have taken. I think, on average, we have about 4 or 5 pictures for every day that she's been alive. I'm grateful for the technology that allows us to do this! If it weren't for our digital camera and the opportunity to store our photos digitally, we would not be able to take as many photos. This was Baby Girl's outfit yesterday. She was so cute, I had to take about 20 photos. (Yes, I have an obsession. Just deal with it.)

She has some pretty silly faces. They just make me smile. She is probably the most loved baby ever! She's growing so big. I can't believe that she's almost 4 months old. Crazy.

Look at this picture! It's her new trick. "What does a fishy say?" And look at her pucker up her lips like that! We have the smartest baby ever! Actually, she doesn't do this when we say "What does a fishy say?" I just happened to snap a picture when she was doing this with her lips.

I have these adorable pictures of Baby Girl that I just had to post. She's so much fun. Last night, I was sitting on the couch, with Baby Girl on my lap. I was trying to play with her. I had a toy and I was talking to her and trying to get her attention. Her total and complete attention was focused on Morgan, who was sitting next to me. He was watching tv and she was just watching him, completely ignoring me and my toy. He would just have to look at her and she would break out into this huge smile! She definitely is a daddy's girl.

Baby Girl is growing like crazy. Morgan and I both agree that Baby Girl just keeps getting cuter and cuter! Her personality is starting to shine through and its adorable! She 'talks' all the time! When she wakes up from her nap, she just 'talks' to herself in her crib. I'm sure she's calling for me! Her new thing is to grab toys! She's getting very good at grabbing a toy that is placed in front of her. She brings it to her mouth. It's so cute. It works out very well because whenever she goes to put her hands in her mouth, I just give her a toy and she puts the toy in her mouth instead.

Also, Baby Girl has gone almost a whole week of not crying during bath time. I think we've learned the secret. I think she likes bath time in the morning and hates it in the evenings. She's such a grump in the evening time, so baths were never fun. Now that we give her a bath in the morning, she's in a much better mood. She's finally getting used to the idea that baths are fun and she's not going to die! Hopefully we can stay with that momentum.

I was just reflecting on what this year has brought to us, and I'm so grateful! This has been a long year of change, but it has been wonderful changes. Morgan got a new job. We moved to a different city. We bought a house. We have a beautiful addition to our family. It has been a very wonderful year. I can only hope that the next year will bring us as many blessings.

These are just a few pictures of our adorable Baby Girl. It looks like in one of her pictures, she is flashing a gang sign. Her shirt says "adorable", and that wraps up every ounce of our Baby Girl. She is absolutely adorable!

Baby Girl got a beautiful Christmas Dress as a present from Great Grandpa and Grandma Frame. It fits her perfectly. We took a couple of pictures of her before Church yesterday. She gave us some pretty funny faces. Look at her chubby arms. There are rolls upon rolls upon rolls. It almost looks painful. She needs to gain some height to stretch out some of that fat. She's such a cutie!

With the Holidays, Morgan has had some time off. He has gotten to spend more time with Baby Girl. She loves her daddy. They have a lot of fun together. Here are some pictures taken on Friday of them playing together. Morgan played his guitar for her and she loved it! He sang a song to her with her name in it! They were watching television together too. They are so stinking cute together.

On Friday, Morgan came home early from work. I was nursing Baby Girl on the couch, when Morgan walked in the door. As soon as she heard his voice, she pulled away, turned her head toward him and smiled as big as she could! She definitely knows her daddy and loves him very much!

What a wonderful Christmas! We have a very spoiled Baby Girl! She got a ton of fun presents! Morgan and I actually woke up before Baby Girl and opened presents. She slept until 7:30! Santa brought her a mobile to go over her crib. Here is a picture of Morgan helping her open her present. And another picture of her 'playing' with her present! I have loved it. It helps her fall right asleep in her crib. It's a big help!

Baby Girl has 3 sets of Grandparents and they all spoil her to death! A very big THANK YOU for the presents. Here is a picture of Baby Girl with all 3 of the presents. Grandpa and Grandma Frame gave her a high chair. Grandpa and Grandma James gave her this bouncy chair. Grandpa and Grandma Leyland gave her this play gym. THANK YOU!

It is Baby Girl's First Christmas! I know she's excited. I've been telling her about it for a month now. She's got to be excited. We had these Baby's First Christmas pajamas from my cousin (thanks Stacie!). So Baby Girl wore them last night to get ready for Christmas Eve. It's kind of big, but that's okay! We also put this silly hat on her and took a picture before she went to bed last night. Doesn't she look excited?!

Then today, Baby Girl is wearing a cute onesie that says "What Santa doesn't bring me. . . Grandma will". This is so appropriate for our spoiled little baby! Once again, we slapped the silly hat on her to take a picture. It kind of looks like she's pouting. Don't her cheeks look huge?!

I'm pretty sure our Baby Girl is going to be a Hand Sucker. Not necessarily a thumb sucker, but a hand sucker. If that's genetic, we can blame Morgan. She's never really liked her pacifier. She'll take it sometimes, and other times she'll push it out of her mouth with her tongue. I always try to give it to her, but it only works about half the time. Now that she's discovered her hands, she always has her hands in her mouth. I used to think it was so adorable (and I still do), but now I'm worried that she's developing a bad habit. She normally sucks on the side of her hand. As you can see from the picture, her fingers are extended, but her thumb is tucked into her hand. She sucks on her thumb knuckle.  Her hands have gotten so red and raw from her sucking on them. I was starting to worry that it was hurting, so I put some socks on her hands to see if that would help. The other picture is of her sock covered hand while she was in her crib. It worked, she would bring her hand to her face and get really confused. She didn't like it very much and got pretty fussy. Then I felt bad for confusing her. Her hands look a lot better today, but she still sucks on them.

Let me just say that all of this snow is my Christmas wish come true! I love when it snows. It is finally looking like Christmas! It might be easier for me when it snows, because I don't have to go anywhere. I get to stay in my warm home and watch the cold snow from inside. It's starting to get really cold too, which makes me more hesitant to take Baby Girl outside. Last night, we journeyed to the mall and to the store to buy a snow shovel. It was a whopping 17 degrees. We bundled Baby Girl up. We put this "Future Aggie" hat on her to keep her warm! This was a wonderful gift from the Wardles (thank you!). Morgan and I are both Aggies, so hopefully Baby Girl will be too! We snapped this picture right before we left. I had to put the hat back on her 3 times because she kept wiggling out of it. I don't think she likes hats too much. She was still really cute in it.

Earlier in the day, I found this moose hat that I had forgotten about. We posted a picture of Baby Girl wearing this hat on September 26. (You can go to Archives at the top of this page and find the entry if you want to see it again!) She was tiny then. The hat fits her a lot better now than it did then. She hates wearing it! Maybe she knows how silly the hat is! We tried getting her to smile, but she just gave us a look that said "Hurry up and take your picture before I start crying!" She's adorable in it, even if she hates it!

Ever since Baby Girl was a newborn, Morgan has been kissing her cheeks. Then he pushes her lips up to his cheek and tells her "Thank You" for kissing him. She loves this! This got her to smile when she was first learning how to smile. Now she starts 'talking' when she 'kisses' you, or when you touch her lips. There have been several times when it sounds like she is repeating the same sounds and syllables that we say to her. That's exactly what happened last night when we filmed this! If you listen carefully, after she 'kisses' Morgan's cheek, it sounds like she says "Thank You". I'm afraid that she'll think the name of a kiss is thank you! Oh, well. It's adorable! I'm so glad we were able to get it on film. At least we're teaching her good manners! Hopefully, she'll be a very polite little girl.

What a wonderful weekend! I always love the weekend, because Morgan gets to stay home with me! It started to feel a lot more like Christmas. First of all, Saturday morning, we went to Morgan's work party. Yes, that's right - it started at 7:00 on a Saturday morning. It was actually really cool. Instead of paying for a real fancy dinner, the company held the party at Costco before the store opened. They had hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls waiting for us as we walked in the door. Then Santa and Mrs. Claus welcomed us. Morgan's company gave us a gift card for Costco - so we could walk around and spend the money they gave us. They also had a breakfast burrito bar and a crepe bar. It was delicious! So, we spent the morning, shopping Costco. Throughout the store they had games that you could play, like putting a golf ball, basketball shoot etc. We already have all of our Christmas shopping done, so we got to spend the money on us! It was really fun! We mostly bought baby wipes and food storage items. Nothing too exciting, but stuff we could really use. Plus, we still have about $30 left on the card, so we'll have to go back and see what else we can buy. 

After the party, we came home to relax. It finally started to snow. It was so pretty, big huge flakes falling from the sky. It was a perfect day to just stay at home. Morgan decided to start a fire in our fireplace. It was so nice and cozy. It felt like winter, finally! While he did this, I made a gingerbread house! It took a lot of time, but it's a fun holiday activity! I really enjoyed it! Morgan helped with the 'snow' on my gingerbread house!

Saturday night, we went to our Church Christmas Party. It was nice to talk to some of our neighbors and get to know them a little bit better. We had the famous ham and funeral potato meal, which is the best!  I was hoping Santa would make an appearance, but he must have had a previous engagement.

Then, on Sunday, we spent the day relaxing. It was a pretty day. We had blue skies, but it was freezing cold. Baby Girl was so good at church. She ate during Sunday School, then was awake all through Relief Society. She was as happy as could be! I put her on a blanket on the floor and held a toy above her. She was entertained by that the entire time. We got a couple of cute pictures of her after church. It was her nap time so she was tired. Her face looks tired, but still adorable. During Baby Girl's nap time, Morgan and I popped popcorn, drank hot chocolate, and played games together. We played a game of Stratego. I am NOT good at this game. I have no strategy. Morgan completely destroyed me on this! Then we played Scattergories. I think Morgan and I tied at this game. It was a wonderful weekend!

What!?! Baby Girl is ONLY three months old? How much longer of this do I have? Unlike Jen, Fatherhood has left me dazed and confused, instead of learning life's most precious lessons, I'm left with only a dumb look on my face, an open jaw, and a grunt that only cavemen understand.  In my long long long long time of being a father I only have questions like:

1. How can something so little produce so much poop?
2. When will Daddy's next doctor appointment be so that he can get snipped?
3. Eating 8 times a day every 3 hours...really?
4. What color will your poop be today?
5. Would she like me more if I was lactating?
6. Where is the nearest bar?
7. You're not hungry, you're not messy, you're not sleepy, so why are you still crying?
8. God, are you really there?

I really do enjoy being a father and Jen does a wonderful job of helping me along the way and seems to have the answers to all my deep deep questions. If it were not for my wonderful wife there would be no possible way I could raise such an adorable, intelligent, little girl.

Today Baby Girl is 3 months old. Time is going so fast and she is growing so big! I was thinking about what I’ve learned about motherhood in the short amount of time that I’ve been a mother.

• I can’t even describe how much I love my baby. Every day, the love seems to grow.
• I am so proud of EVERY little thing that she does. For example: she’s discovered sucking on her hands. I think it’s the cutest thing ever that she has learned to bring her chubby little hand to her mouth and suck on it. Every baby does this, but it’s even cuter when she does it.
• My emotions are tied very closely to hers. When she is happy and smiley, my heart soars. When she cries because something hurts, it breaks my heart.
• I would do ANYTHING for my Baby Girl. If she needs me to hold her and rock her through the entire night, I would gladly do it.
• Parenthood has strengthened my marriage. Even though my conversations with Morgan now consist of Baby Girl’s eating and pooping schedule. It’s remarkable how an adorable little girl can turn a man into a father. Watching Morgan with our Baby Girl makes me love him even more.

These are just a few things that I’ve been thinking about. Being a mother has brought the greatest amount of joy into my life!

Our Baby Girl has discovered sitting up and she LOVES it. She's still very wobbly, and needs something to support her, but she loves to be upright. When she's laying down, she tries to lunge her head up to try and sit up. She doesn't like me craddling her in my arms anymore. She needs to be upright, looking at the world. My baby girl is growing up. [Sidenote: her jacket is size 6 months, and her pants are 6-9 months. What a chunker!]

Baby Girl is such a good sleeper. She's slept the last 3 days until 7:00 in the morning. She's done this for a couple of weeks now, but every other night or so - she would wake up earlier. These are a couple of cute pictures that I took while she was taking a nap yesterday. She fell asleep after her bath yesterday, before we could get her dressed. I wrapped the blanket around her to keep her warm, but she fought her arms free. (She always does that!)

Baby Girl has discovered something new. Her hands. Her motor skills have developed enough to allow her to bring her fists to her face. A few days ago, I heard a very loud sucking noise. When I looked at Baby Girl, she was sucking on her fist. It's so funny to watch her have fun with this new thing! In addition to sucking on her fist, she has started rubbing her eyes when she is tired. She usually just gets slobber all over her face, but its still cute.

So finally I have come to terms with Jen's Christmas decorations and music. We have sufficiently celebrated Thanksgiving and mourned its passage, so now it is time to move on and start to celebrate Christmas. I have taken some pictures of the decorations my wife has put up, she does such a great job I don't know how she finds the time to do it.

Last night we went and visited my brother and Paige, it is fun to see them. They were on their way to the symphony, and because it was Beethoven's Requiem, they were all dressed in black. It looked like lots of fun. I must admit it was unusual to see my brother all dressed up (with a tie I might add!), and not in his normal uniform of a 15+ year old tee-shirt with camping stains, well worn shoes, and pants full of holes. Paige is doing an excellent job at domesticating him, keep up the good work.

Baby Girl was very temperamental last night as well, she would be fine, scream bloody murder, and then be fine again. We think it is probably gas that was giving her grief. She has been so good lately that we've forgotten about how she used to act when she had gas. We were finally able to get her under control at a McDonald's and she fell asleep for most of the car ride home.

Last night, we traveled to Temple Square to look at the Christmas lights. I think half of the state of Utah also had those same plans. We were shuffled around the cold temple grounds, surrounded by mobs of people. It was a pretty cold evening, but we bundled up warm. We dressed Baby Girl up warm, then strapped her in a carrier on my stomach. I wrapped my coat around her. She was plenty warm, and slept most of the time. She kept me warm too.

In addition to the lights, we looked at several Nativity scenes that they had on the grounds. They also had beautiful lanterns and luminaries with lights shining through, showing Christmas designs. We went in one of the visitors centers to keep warm, and there was a choir singing lovely Christmas music. It felt like Christmas. Overall, we had a nice night together.

Yesterday, Baby Girl and I were playing with our new camera. I stumbled upon this cool setting on our camera called Color Accent. I didn't realize it would take those type of pictures, but we got some cute ones.

I think Baby Girl is going through another growth spurt. The past two days, she's been a little extra fussy. She's been sleeping more. And she's been eating more frequently than normal. Thursday night, she only slept 5 hours before she needed to eat again. Last night, however, she slept through the whole night. She's starting to 'talk' so much now. It's so cute to hear her use her little voice. Morgan keeps trying to get her to say "daddy". I think he's determined that that is going to be her first word. Whenever he tries to get her to say 'daddy', I say 'noooo'. And a few times, she's copied my 'ooooo' noise.

So, as my wife said, Santa visited our house early this year with a Cannon PowerShot Camera. After using our Kodak for a few years we finally just got fed up with grainy, blurry, or overexposed pictures and got this camera -- which Santa found for a killer price on Amazon.com. Also, I must admit, that by purchasing this camera I had hopes of becoming the latest tennis sensation, so far that has not happened, but then I guess Rome wasn't built in a day either(it was built in like a week though right? Maybe two?).

Now that I've played with it a little it does take some great pictures; however, some pictures have yielded a little graininess that I'm not too thrilled about. It's image stabilizing functionality is incredible, you can literally shake it up and down and the picture comes out crystal clear. Colors also seem to come out better that our other camera. The rechargeable battery and compact size make it a great portable piece of equipment and the display on the back is quite large and much higher resolution than the Kodak. It has a lot of picture formatting functions built right into the camera that make it fun to play around with; however, Photoshop will always be my old stand by when it comes to picture formatting. Also the video recording is soooo much better than our Kodak it's not even funny. We will have to post a video of Baby Girl doing something cute one of these days so that you can see the difference.

I do think the Kodak has more intuitive buttons and on-screen menus, but maybe that's because I've had it for a number of years.  The Cannon seems to depend a lot more on the on-screen menu, and less on physical buttons, which makes things a little more complicated and longer to get to.  Also the Cannon does not have a panoramic (take three pictures and it stitches them together) function which the Kodak does -- this is one of my favorite functions on the Kodak and something it did failry well.

So anyway I guess that's my little blurb on our new camera, I can't wait to take outdoor daytime pictures in the spring and summer time (right now it's dark when I leave for work and dark when I get back) with this because I think they will turn out great. Pictures taken of Baby Girl will also be much better from now on!

Santa came early this year. He came yesterday, delivering presents on a big brown truck labeled UPS. Actually, for our family present, we decided to get a new camera. We ordered it online on Black Friday for a pretty good price. So, today, I decided to try out our new camera. I placed Baby Girl on our Love Sac (the most common background for most of her photoshoots) and started clicking away. I got a ton of cute pictures, so I posted a couple of them. I'm still learning how to use all the settings of our new camera, but so far, I'm fairly impressed.

I'm sorry that this blog is a tribute to our only, very spoiled, baby. And if you get tired of reading about how adorable she is, then you might have to stop reading our blog. She is so stinking adorable. Yesterday, we weighed Baby Girl. And the Heavyweight weighs in just 2 ounces shy of 14 pounds. Yes, that's right. She's gained about 2 pounds in the last 3 weeks. I read in my Child Development book that most babies double their birth weight by the time they are 5 months old. She's more than doubled her birth weight, and she's not even 3 months old. I am so glad that she is growing so well. I don't have to worry about her gaining weight. It means that she is healthy and growing.

Baby Girl is getting excited for Christmas! I keep telling her that she "better not cry" because "Santa Claus is coming to town!" I wish there was snow on the ground. It doesn't quite feel like December when the temperatures are reaching the 50s. It has been pretty mild so far. I've been reading Christmas stories to Baby Girl. She was looking at my Nativity (well, she was probably looking at the lights that shine behind my Nativity), so I told her about Joseph and Mary and how Jesus was a Baby, just like she is. It'll be fun to tell her all about Christmas next year and the year after, when she can actually understand it a little more.

This has been a fantastic holiday. Morgan already wrote about our Thanksgiving, which was wonderful. Our Baby Girl has had an overload of grandparents over the last couple of days. Which I don't think can ever be a bad thing. On Wednesday night, my dad and step-mom and sister came for dinner and a visit. Baby Girl was pretty happy, especially since she's usually really fussy in the evening time.  Then all day Thursday, we spent with Morgan's family. Then on Friday, my mom came to visit and left this morning. It's been fun to spend so much time with family. Thanks to Baby Girl's grandparents, we have one spoiled child. 

It's been said that our Baby Girl is turning into a Mamma's Girl. I think she's too young to really care. I know that she knows who I am, and she recognizes me, but as long as she's with a caring person, I don't think she misses me. Who knows. I don't mean to have a Mamma's Girl, but it's kinda hard when I spend 24 hours a day with her. I've left her on several occasions with Morgan to go to meetings or the store. About a month ago, Morgan and I left her to go to the temple. And my mom offered to babysit on Friday night, so we took the opportunity.

It's been a while since Morgan and I have been on an official date. We hang out together, but this was fun. We definitely need to do this more often. We went to Sonic for dinner. They have a brown bag special for only $6.99. Cheap dinner and we got to sit quietly in our car together and talk. Then we went to The Quarry to go Indoor Rock Climbing. We saw this place a few months ago, and Morgan said that he would want to go, but I was 8 months pregnant. Morgan was an expert Rock Climber back in his pre-mission life. He's been a couple of times after his mission, and not at all since we've been married. We got a 2 for 1 coupon in the mail, so we thought we would give it a try. I have never been rock climbing, and I'm not only out of shape, but have no muscles at all. I didn't think I would be very good at it at all, but I was willing to give it a try. We had to take a little course on how to balay. Then we had to climb a practice wall in front of the instructor. The first 3 steps, I was excited because it was pretty fun. And it didn't matter if I tripped and fell, because Morgan would catch me. Then I kept climbing, and about half way up the 45 foot wall, I started to get short of breath. My arms started getting tired and I realized that this would be a lot easier if I exercised once in a while. I kept climbing and made it to the top without too much trouble. Then it was Morgan's turn to climb the wall. He did it in about half the time.

Now that we were 'certified', we were free to climb the other walls. Morgan found a fairly 'easy' wall for me to climb, so I started climbing. I got about 15 feet up, when I got stuck. I couldn't see where to grab and couldn't climb higher. I fell, but Morgan had me secure - so I didn't go anywhere. Morgan asked if I wanted to rest or start over, and I did not want to climb that 15 feet again, so I stayed there hanging in the air - resting. When I had caught my breath, I tried grabbing again, but I still couldn't figure out where to put my feet and my hands. After falling again, I just had Morgan bring me down. Morgan climbed the same wall with great ease. Then we found an even easier wall for me to climb. I liked this wall better. I was able to climb all the way to the top. Morgan climbed a more difficult wall. By that time, I was tired. I know, I only climbed 2 1/2 walls, but I was done. Morgan climbed another pretty difficult wall. He said he was out of practice, but I was impressed with his mad rock climbing skills.

It was so much fun to go on an official date, to get out of the house and not worry about our Baby Girl for a few hours. I got to try something new, something that Morgan really enjoys. I felt completely safe on an indoor rock climbing wall, but now Morgan is talking about taking me out in the 'wild' to rock climb this summer. Hmmm, I'm not so sure I can handle that yet, but you never know. Thanks, Morgan, for the wonderful date night!

Welcome to the modern world. I've been busy the last couple of days realizing a few ideas that I've had for this website that have finally gotten done. They are relatively small and may go unnoticed but some of them took a lot of work and research. They are as follows:

1. Live Traffic Feed by FeedJit - Jen wanted this feature so we got this up and running
2. HTML editor by FCK Editor - If you leave comments from now on you will see this feature. This took a little bit of work but it turned out alright. It just allows you to add some formatting to your text when submitting a comment
3. Dedicated Comment Window - I've seen other blogs that have the separate pop-up window for comments that opens to a specific dimension so this is what I've gone a head and programmed into this blog. I did have to tweek some of the setting in Firefox to get it working (it would open in a tab and not a separate window) so if you find it doing the same thing you go into Tools -> Options -> Tabs and check "A New Window". If you find this feature more annoying than helpful please let me know.
4. Non Case Sensitive Gotchya Codes - Yes, I've sacrificed security on the altar of convenience. The gotchya codes for the comments are no longer case sensitive.
5. Mobile Version - I have programed a lightweight version of the website for mobile devices (e.g. cell phones) because I know of a few people who use them to view our blog. When coming to this blog it will automatically detect if you are using a mobile device and transfer you appropriately. If you find that this feature does not work with your mobile device, as I have not tested it out with every kind, please let me know and I can get it fixed.

So, anyway these are just some of the little changes that I've made to hopefully make this blog a little better and more user friendly.

This year we had Thanksgiving dinner with my family at my parent's house. I think it is the first time I've been home for Thanksgiving in a few years and it was nice to spend time with family during this time. Jen made a relish tray that resembled a turkey, it was really creative and looked really really good. Jen also made her famous caramels that turned out perfectly -- a feat in itself because they require so much attention and she was also dealing with an upset Baby Girl at the same time, and she also turned out two loaves of her wonderful homemade bread.

Baby Girl got a lot of attention at Thanksgiving, probably because she is the first Grandbaby in my family, but she didn't seem to mind all the different people holding her. She was incredibly calm throughout the day. Many pictures were taken of her and we posted a couple with oversized mittens on her hands. They said she looked like a penguin.

Before dinner we had a family game of Yahtzee, competition was heated between my brother and my sister.When it came down to the end and all the scores were tallied up my wonderful wife surprisingly won the game and came out 15 points ahead of the next in line, which was my brother.She always wins board games -- I don't know why I play with her.

For Thanksgiving dinner we had a wonderful traditional meal (however,I don't recall stuffing being on the table during our feast) of turkey, potatoes, gravy, vegetables, breads and rolls, cranberry sauce, and many other Thanksgiving type foods. Afterwards we rested and then indulged ourselves in many different types of pies. Jen and I really liked the peppermint pie, but there was also pumpkin, lemon meringue, coconut cream, caramel apple meringue, and apple -- there may have been more but that's all we can remember.

After dinner we took some family pictures and you can click here to see my brother out of control when we decided to take a funny picture. After the pictures Jen fed Baby Girl and then we took off for home. Baby Girl, who normally loves car rides, was crying and screaming for the last 20 or so minutes of our ride home, but we made it home safe, and full of food.

In the words of Tom Lehrer

"Christmas time is here, by golly, Disapproval would be folly, Deck the halls with hunks of holly, Fill the cup and don't say when. Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens, Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens,Even though the prospect sickens, Brother, here we go again."

I just want to brag for a minute about our Baby Girl! I put her on her tummy last night and she was holding her head up so well! I got a couple of cute pictures. She was holding it really high for a long time too. She's so adorable.

Last night, she had a hard time going to sleep. She ate at 9:00, but was wide awake and fussy afterwards. Morgan finally got her to sleep and in her crib, but she woke up 5 minutes later. So, I tried rocking her and she would not get to sleep. Finally at 10:30, I fed her again, and she fell right to sleep. And she slept through the whole night and didn't wake up until 7:00 this morning! At 6:30, I woke up and was surprised that she was still sleeping. I must admit, I snuck into her room to make sure she was alright. Sure enough, she was sleeping like a log! It only took her 10 weeks to adjust to sleeping through the night. Not too shabby!

Just for fun, I looked up these pictures, and I want your opinion! Here is a baby picture of Morgan and a baby picture of me and a picture of Baby Girl. Who does she look like?

Our Baby Girl is 'talking' all of the time. It's so fun to hear her little voice develop as she's oooohing and aaaaahing. Last night, she slept until 4:30 this morning. Not quite through the whole night, but I'm not complaining. She was kinda crying, so I decided to try and rock her back to sleep before she was fully awake. Just to try and encourage her to sleep longer. I went into her dark room and started bouncing her matress a little to try and rock her to sleep. I didn't turn on any lights or talk to her at all. She stopped crying and started 'talking' to me. She couldn't see or hear me, but she knew I was there. It was almost like she was telling me "I'm awake, so there's no use in trying!" So I gave up rather quickly and got her up to eat. After a feeding and a diaper change, she was pretty happy and still wide awake. I wanted to go back to bed and Baby Girl was just as happy as could be - awake, when she should be sleeping. I put her down in her crib, still wide eyed, I kissed her and told her to go to sleep. Then I went to bed. She stayed there quietly until she fell asleep on her own! What an easy baby!!

Later, after Baby Girl was dressed for the day, I decided I would try to get her 'talking' on camera. It didn't quite work out. She ended up getting fussy. But I did get this cute video of her before she started crying. Enjoy.

This is our Sunday report. Usually Sundays are a very laid back, relaxing day. Today was exactly that type of day. We went to church. Baby Girl did well, until Relief Society. She was just a little fussy. I spent most of the meeting standing at the back, rocking her. At least I was I able to stay for the lesson. After church, we spent the day relaxing. Morgan cleaned out the fireplace. I made banana bread. Baby Girl took a nap in her swing. She's so much fun when she's awake. I've attached a couple of pictures of Morgan and Baby playing. So, as for our Sunday Report, there's not much to report, other than we are happy and healthy!

Here's an update on our beautiful baby girl since our blog crashed. Thanks, Morgan, for fixing it! This last week has been great. Baby Girl is doing fantastic at sleeping through the night. She eats at about 9:00 then goes to sleep pretty well. Almost every night this week, she's slept until 4:30 in the morning. One night she made it until 5:30 in the morning! It's fantastic!! It's nice to be able to sleep for that long. Hopefully she goes a little longer as time goes on.

She is such a chunker. I think she gains weight every day. She's so cute. She's now in Size 2 diapers. It's crazy to think that she was once in, and has since grown out of, Preemie, Newborn and Size 1 diapers.

She is smiling all the time too. Here is a cute picture that Morgan caught on camera. She's so fun. She's starting to 'talk' a lot more too. Morgan can easily get her 'talking' to him. It sounds like she copies what he says to her. It's adorable. She's now starting to like toys. She can't grab on to them yet, but I hang them over her head and she just stares. Her swing has a moving mobile, and she focuses onto the moving butterfly or caterpillar. She loves it. It's fun to watch her grow and develop.

Some of you may have noticed our blog was down for a few days. We had some technical difficulties with our web server's hard drive making funny noises so we shut it down for a few days until I could get the server rebuilt with a new hard drive. Well today we finally have got it up and running again so hopefully we will not see anymore down time. For the past couple days we were hosting the page on another server, a friend at work was kind enough to do that for us, and we did not post any blogs during that time because of the setup.

Hopefully now we should be running alright and not see any downtime. Oh yeah and the video above was a test for embedding video on the blog -- looks like it works! It is from Halloween, I never dropped her, and yes I might be an irresponsible parent for doing this.

This is a cute picture of Baby Girl flexing for the camera. Look at her bulging biceps! Isn't she strong? Actually, her fat rolls are getting out of hand! They are so cute, but it's hard to keep them clean. She has rolls and rolls around her neck. Unfortunately, milk and spit up run down and get in her neck rolls. It is so hard to keep them clean. Plus, she hates it when we have to clean her neck. This is her after her bath this morning. She's such a cutie.

Her bathtimes are getting a lot better. She's learning to love the water. She doesn't cry during her bath, until we have to clean her hair and neck. Then she cries. And she hates it when we pull her out of the water. We wrap her up in a warm towel as quickly as we can, but it's not fast enough for her! So, if we can get her used to that - then we'll have a tearfree bathtime! We're starting to bathe her every other day, so hopefully she'll get used to it. It took her 5 weeks before she stopped crying when she got her diaper changed. She just takes a long time to adjust to things.

Baby Girl had her 2 month check up yesterday. Everything went well. She doesn't really like the doctor's office. She has to have her clothes off, which she hates. Then she has to lay on a scale, and a bench covered in paper. She always cries and cries. She weighed in at 12 pounds 0 ounces. She's almost doubled her weight since birth! She's now 22 1/2 inches long. She is right on track with her growing. She in the 50% for her length and head size and in the 75% for her weight. What a chunker! At her 2 week checkup, she was in the 50% for her length and head size, but only in the 25% for her weight. She went from 25% to 75%! It's a good thing! We love chubby babies!

She also had to get some immunization shots. It was so sad. She only got two shots, one in each leg. I personally had to prepare myself for this! The nurse cleaned her leg with a little alcohol and Baby Girl started screaming because it was cold. Then before she knew it, the nurse poked her in the leg for the first shot. And poor Baby started screaming. She has this scream where she forgets to breath. She just screams and exhales for a really long time. It's so sad. So, she was screaming until her face was bright red. Then, when she normally breaths, the nurse poked her in the other leg, and she kept screaming - without ever taking a breath! I swear her face was turning purple. It made me soo sad. As soon as I picked her up and put her in her car seat, she had stopped screaming. And by the time I made her next appointment, she was sound asleep.

She slept like a log for the rest of the afternoon. That evening, she started screaming again. We gave her some more Tylenol and that helped. She was pretty fussy and I was fearing she would be fussy all night long. She ate at 9:00 and was asleep by 10:00 last night. She didn't wake up again until 4:00 in the morning! That's the longest stretch she's ever made it. She usually gets up about 2:00. I was delighted! I got a whole 6 hours of consecutive sleep. Then I went back to bed and got another 2 hours of sleep! It was fantastic! We'll have to see how she does tonight. She's been really tired and sleepy all day today too. It's a much better reaction than screaming in pain!

So, our Baby Girl survived her first round of immunization shots and I'm so proud of her! More importantly, I survived them too!

This weekend was a lot of fun. Morgan and I did nothing all weekend long. He helped me clean the house, then we just relaxed and were lazy. It was very relaxing. On Sunday, we got all dressed up to go to church. Baby Girl was adorable, as you can see from the pictures. That was the first time she wore shoes! Aren't they cute? She got a lot of compliments for the ward members. She was SOOO happy during church. She was awake through all of Sacrament Meeting. She was happy as can be, just looking around at all the lights. Morgan's found the sure fire way to make her smile, so we kept her smiling all through the meeting. She slept through Sunday School (like father, like daughter!) and slept through Relief Society. By the time church was over, she was ready to get home and eat something. She cried the whole way home.

Baby Girl is staying awake a lot more through out the day. She's a lot more alert. I've decided that I need to make her environment a little more stimulating when she's awake. The past couple of days I've been reading children's books to her. And she starts 'talking' right along with me. There was one book that had a lot of rhythm and rhyme and she smiled during that book. Yesterday, we were listening to Christmas music (yes, that's right, Christmas music! I LOVE it!), I was singing "Here Comes Santa Claus" along with the song and she was grinning like crazy. It's so fun to see her developing and growing. She is doing a great job and holding up her head on her own. I put her on her tummy on this pillow and she was holding her head up so well for a minute. Then gradually, she got more and more tired as her head slowly rested on the pillow. She's so cute! She's going in for her 2 month check up today. I'll have to report how big she's gotten!

Jen's Parents invited us to go see a hockey game, it was the Utah Grizzlies versus the Ontario Reign. The game was played on a rink dyed pink for breast cancer awareness, and the Grizzlies players dawned pink jerseys - a little different especially for hockey. There was supposed to be a lot of free stuff given out to raise awareness of breast cancer, but it appeared to be a big hoax as everyone we talked to pointed us to someone else for the mysterious free bag-o-stuff -- we eventually gave up. Baby Girl loved all the motion and flashing light which kept her occupied throughout most of the game. During the first period the Reign scored two points which kept the crowds pretty quite, and during the second and most of the third periods nothing really happened. Late into the third period the alcohol started to take full effects on the crowds and they started to get a little unruly. I think Baby Girl learned a few new colorfull four letter words to add to her ever growing vocabulary. With about 3 minutes remaining the Grizzlies finally scored and the crowd went wild. Jen's father covered Baby Girls little ears just as the horn went off signaling the goal, we are very grateful that he did because it was really loud. With the crowd back in the game, or maybe because of the alcohol back in the crowds, the Grizzlies started to play really well and scored another point with 19 seconds remaining to tie the game. It went into overtime which the Grizzlies clearly dominated but did not score. At the end of overtime the game then went into a shootout - a very exciting end to a great game. The Grizz pulled it off by scoring a point in the shoot out and the Reign pulling a big goose egg -- the game ended Grizzlies 3 the Reign 2. It was an exciting game and one that I'm sure Baby Girl will not forget -- well maybe not, in fact she probably will not remember it after next week, but Jen and I thoroughly enjoyed the game, being with family, and listening to drunken angry men embarrassing themselves.

Sunday was a special day! It was our Baby Girl's Baby Blessing. We got her all dressed up for her big day. A beautiful dress. (Which when we first got it, I thought it would be too big. But on her big day, we had to leave the top button undone so it wouldn't choke her!) A very large matching bow. (Morgan hates the bows and usually takes them off as soon as he can!) A delicate bracelet on one wrist (thanks to Grandma Kristy). And a ribbon corsage (thanks to Grandma Lisa). The ribbon corsage is meant for her to wear on her wrist on her blessing day, in her hair on her baptism day, and on her garter on her wedding day. I think Baby Girl looked beautiful!

She was so good during Sacrament Meeting. She was sleeping, until right before the blessing. When she's sleeping, it's a safe bet she'll be good. With her wide awake, you never know what will happen. She was just fine. She just didn't want to sleep through her blessing! It was a beautiful blessing! It wasn't until after Sacrament Meeting that she started to get fussy. She was starting to get hungry. So, a lot of the post-church pictures are with her crying! Oh well.

Baby girl got dressed up Friday night for Halloween. You saw what she wore during the day, but this was her costume for that evening. Isn't she an adorable little ghost? We didn't go trick or treating though. We stayed home and passed out candy to our trick or treaters. We only got 10-15. Not very many. It was a fun holiday, and it will be even more fun next year for our Baby Girl!

One of my most favorite things that our Baby Girl does is Stretch! She stretches ALL the time. It's not just a little stretch. She arches her back, sticks out her chin, and raises both arms out as far as they can go. It is so cute. I think she is still recovering from being cramped in my tummy for so long. She makes the funniest grunting noises as she stretches. When Baby Girl is sleeping, we can always hear grunting stretching noises coming from her room. What a funny girl.

We had a good weekend. We got to take Baby Girl back to Logan for a Baby Shower. We got a ton of cute things. Thanks to those of you who gave us a gift. This was the longest trip we've been on, and she did fantastic.

It was my birthday on Sunday and Baby Girl gave me the best present of all. Saturday night, she only woke up once!! I got so much sleep. She's getting so good at sleeping at night. Then Sunday night, she got up twice. Then last night, she got up only once! More sleep is one of the best birthday presents I could expect. She knows when it is night time. She's really good at falling asleep on her own. Several times, I am able to put her in her crib when she is still awake, and she will fall asleep on her own. I love it!! She is such a good baby!

I'm pretty sure that our Baby Girl is smiling at us! She's been smiling since birth, but only when she has had gas. Recently, Morgan and I have both had her looking wide eyed at us and a little smile has peeked through. I've questioned it for a week or so because I can't get her to repeat a smile right after she smiles. Today, Morgan had her smiling and I was trying to catch it on camera, but it didn't work out. But we still got a pretty cute picture from it anyway.

Baby Girl is doing really well. She stays awake a lot more during the day which is fun. And last night she went 5 hours between feedings! I actually got a good 3 1/2 hours of consecutive sleep! The night before she went 4 hours. Hopefully the trend continues. She's still eating every 3 hours during the day. I think she has finally learned when it is day and night. She is so much fun and so stinking cute!

I am aware that it has been a week since my last blog. I'm sorry. I did so well the week before! I'll try to do better. We've had a good week. We had visitors come on Thursday. Morgan's Aunt Christine and cousin Jasey came down from Logan. They stopped and picked up Grandma Frame and Great Aunt Marlene in Taylorsville. They came for a nice visit and brought some wonderful gifts. Baby Girl slept for everyone except Aunt Christine! She had the magic knack for making Baby cry! It's not her fault that Baby Girl happened to be hungry and need a diaper change both times Aunt Chris held her! Thanks for coming to visit, you are welcome any time!

Today was Baby Girl's first time to the full block of church. She's been to Sacrament Meeting a couple of times before and we had no problem. Today we went for the full 3 hours. She was wide awake during Sacrament Meeting. She sat in her carrier and stared at the bright lights. She was fine until the second speaker, then she started to get a little fussy. I was afraid that she was still hungry. She had eaten right before we left for church, but we had to cut her a little short to make it to church on time. I took her to the Mothers Room, where she cried for the rest of the speakers. By the time the meeting ended, I had her settled and practically asleep. She slept through Sunday School and Relief Society without any problem. It was fun to have everyone in our ward Oooh and Aaahhh over how cute she is. We think she's pretty cute too.

Dan and I decided to do some late season fishing out at Payson Lakes before it got too cold today. We got up there around 7:00, just as it was getting light amidst the echoing sounds of deer hunters missile guided cannon fire. We started fishing on the west side of the lake just north of the parking lot, the water level looked really low and the bank was hard to get to because of the mud. We both had not got as much as a nibble for the first hour. Dan got a medium sized rainbow, but then it went dead after that.

I was a little frustrated so I went back to the car to get the camera and take some pictures on the east side of the lake. Setting up the camera I noticed a group of ripples just where the sun was hitting the water -- it looked like fish to me. It was about 10:00 a.m. and I cast out in the middle of the activity using an olive elk hair caddis fly and the water exploded! I reeled in a fairly decent sized Brook Trout and man did it fight. I cast out again and this time the fish left the water going after my bait and again I reeled in another slightly smaller Brook.

By this time Dan had made his way around the lake and threw out a line in the same general area and got a strike, and reeled in a fighting Rainbow Trout. In the next half hour each cast yielded a strike and we caught our limit in no time. We both agree that the Fish there strike hard, and fight harder making for some fun fishing.

After the day was done and we decided to head back Dan had kept two monster sized Rainbows and I kept three Brook Trout and one Rainbow -- a fairly successful fishing trip if you ask me. Click here to see the one that got away!

Our Baby Girl goes through crying spurts. Today is one of the crying days. It started last night. I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep the night before, so I went to bed early last night. Morgan was wonderful enough to take care of the feeding, changing and rocking of our baby at 10:00 last night, so I could sleep. I got 3 consecutive hours of sleep before she was hungry again at 1:00. It was wonderful! At each of her feedings, she cried because she had gas. Then afterwards, she just needed to be rocked. Well, this morning at 7:00, Baby Girl woke up screaming. She wasn't due to eat for another hour. She cried and cried and cried. Even though it breaks my heart, it's so cute. Her bottom lip quivers back and forth. After trying everything to calm her down, I finally thought to turn on some music. The secret is Norah Jones. She loves Norah Jones. I love Norah Jones, and I listened to it quite a bit while I was pregnant. Plus, it's pretty relaxing music. The very second that she heard the Norah Jones song, she was silent. She was so peaceful and just listened to the music. It was so funny. I should have thought about it sooner. I was able to rock with her to the music, and by the third song she was out cold.

Baby Girl is one month old today! It's crazy how fast time flies. She has grown and changed so much since she was born. It's fun to see the change. I am so glad that she came early. She still wasn't due until October 13, which is in 2 more days. I got to skip out on the last month of pregnancy. It was so worth it, because we got an extra month with our baby girl that we weren't expecting. What a blessing in our lives!

Yesterday, Baby Girl and I went shopping at the mall with Grandma Kristy. Baby Girl seemed to enjoy the outing and was awake and happy when we first got there. It didn't take long for the lull of the stroller to rock her to sleep. Thanks to Grandma Kristy, Baby Girl got a brand new outfit! These pictures are Baby Girl sporting her new clothes!

If you can tell from this picture, the pants are pretty big on her. The onesie fits perfectly for her. Does this mean she has a long body and short legs? When I was 21 weeks pregnant, we got an ultrasound to find out we were having a girl, the ultrasound tech said that we must have tall genes, because her leg bones were measuring longer than average at this age. So, naturally we were pretty excited to have tall kids! We're trying to weed out the Frame Family Gene of shortness. But now, according to her outfits, she seems to have short legs! Hopefully, she can still grow tall.

It was just another day when Baby Girl woke up crying at 5am, Jen went in to change, feed, and rock her. I tried to get just a little bit more sleep, but after 15 min of trying, and Baby Girl still crying I gave up and got in the shower. After showering and eating a bowl of Corn Flakes, Jen had gotten Baby Girl back to sleep, and Jen herself curled back into bed and catching up on some much needed Z's. I got dressed, watched a little news and then at 7:25 went to work with Baby Girl and Jen still asleep.

While at work Jen and Baby Girl spent most the day at home. Baby Girl actually went 3 1/2 to 4 hours between feedings today. Now if she can just do this during the night time. She was such a happy girl today. While she slept, Jen did some basic housework (wash the dishes, laundry, paid some bills). Every day this week, Jen and Baby Girl have gone on an outing -- today's outing was to the bank. Then Jen fixed a wonderful dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

After getting back from work Jen and I had a wonderful dinner, it was the perfect meal for the Fall weather. Baby Girl was so happy and content in Jen's arms but I needed to take her so Jen could finish making the sandwiches. Taking Baby Girl to the couch and giving her raspberries (which I still can't tell if she likes or dislikes) I noticed a foul odor coming from under the blanket she was wrapped up in. She started to fuss so I played the guitar for her hoping that would calm her down but after fussing turned to crying I decided it was time for a diaper change and handed her off to Jen. Finally with a fresh diaper and a lot of tears Baby Girl could now finish her bowl movement. Then after yet another change and being fed Baby Girl went back to sleep to allow Jen and I to veg out on the couch and watch Myth Busters. Afterwards I played a few games of chess where I lost my first two matches but won the third playing black. Jen did dishes and took a shower, by which time we both went back to sleep just to do it all over again -- well until Baby Girl started crying again, psssst Jen go get her!

As many of you know, Morgan and I had way too much fun with trying to come up with clever names for our Baby. Names that would go well with the last name of Frame. We had a good list too! Dora, 8x10, Picture, Document, Digital, Freeze, Bruce. Then when she was born on September 11, Morgan's gears shifted to more patriotic names such as Operation Iraqi Freedom (which I quickly vetoed!). Actually I vetoed all of these names! Our daughter will thank me someday, because if it was up to Morgan - our poor Baby Girl would have a funny unusual name! Luckily we both settled on a very adorable normal name!

Now that she's officially named,(she isn't blessed yet), but we do have her birth certificate, the nicknames have begun! She makes this grunting sound that sounds like a dolphin, so naturally we call her Flipper! Another very common nickname is Spazzy McGee. Those of you that said she was very graceful have not seen her when she's awake and fighting mad. She has arms that swing and flail about. Her arms just swing and she starts acting like a Spazz, so we affectionately call her that! This is a picture of her moving her arms about. It was taken a couple of weeks ago - so she still looks little! She's cute even when she acts like a Spazz!

Don't worry, I still call her sweet nicknames like sweetheart, honey, cutie etc. We do love her, even though we laugh at the things that she does.

Here is a nice picture taken of Baby Girl and Mom lounging on the Love Sac.

As you can see, our Baby Girl is growing tons! She's actually starting to fit into some of the outfits that we have for her. At first, she spent most of her time in the few preemie outfits and onesies that would fit her. Now she can fit into some of the Newborn and 0-3 months clothes that we have. Some of them are still kinda big on her - but it'll work. This picture is the outfit she's wearing today! There is a cute white hat that goes with it too, but her head is too small for it. We have too much fun together!

As the cooler weather falls upon us we want to make sure Baby Girl keeps warm so that she continues with her good health. We started trying on some hats to keep her little head warm. She first sported a pink hat which made her look like a cute fluffy Mexican gangster -- it was a little big and baggy. We then tried on a hat gifted to us by Paige, it fit really well and Baby Girl loved it. The picture turned out a little blurry so I tried to doctor it up in Photoshop, I don't think I did a very good job but what can you do?

Baby Girl is starting to eat a lot more and is putting on a lot of weight, it's amazing how different she looks compared to a few days ago. It is also getting a lot harder to carry her in her car seat, feed her, and rock her to sleep without your arm starting to tire after 5 or 6 minutes. If she keeps up this growth maybe by the time she is 1 she will be able to reach the sink and do my dishes!!

The future is here! This blog is now running somewhat how I would like it being driven by an R:Base database and a user friendly blog posting interface brought to you by the good folks at Fortran -- no more static HTML code for Jen to edit! Also the comments seem to be working well so give them a try and tell me if anything goes wrong.

I am going to brag for a minute about how my wonderful husband is such a wonderful daddy! If any of you talked to Morgan while I was pregnant, he constantly joked about how this whole baby thing was my idea. He always talked about how he would just work and leave all the baby stuff to me. Well it was all talk before. He is an excellent father! I honestly think he has changed more diapers than I have! He is so cute with our Baby Girl.

One of the first things Morgan does when he gets home from work is go straight for our Baby Girl. When he leaves for work, he always kisses her goodbye. I have to remind him to kiss me too! It's wonderful to see! Even though I sometimes feel like his 2nd favorite girl now, I don't have any complaints about it. I love watching the two of them bond and spend time together!

As a new mother, I feel I've done pretty well about caring for my child and not calling the pediatrician with a million questions. Well that lasted 3 weeks and ended today. I got worried about Baby Girl's recent diarrhea, so first thing this morning I called the doctor. After speaking with the nurse, we decided that she better come in to get checked. After a thorough check up, the doctor assured me that she was fine. It was normal and our baby is perfectly healthy. I did walk away with tons of free samples of diaper rash cream though!

They weighed our Baby Girl and she weighed in at a whopping 7 pounds 12 ounces! One week ago, at her two week check up, she weighed 6 pounds 12 ounces! She gained one full pound in only a week! We've started to notice that she's putting on weight! That's always a big relief that she's growing!

We decided to go to church this week! It was Baby Girl's first time. We just went to Sacrament Meeting and then came home. She slept through the entire thing. We dressed her up in a cute pink lacy dress and she was adorable!

We also got to try our stroller for the first time. She seemed to like the stroller ride. We need to go on more walks, but I seem to always prefer a nap over going for a walk. Our Baby Girl seemed to like the stroller ride though.

It was time for our Baby Girl's first bath. She surprisingly loved the sponge baths that we gave her. She loves having her hair washed. So, we tried out the baby bath that we got. She didn't like it so much. She probably would have liked it better if Morgan and I were better at giving her a bath. I think she kept getting cold. So, hopefully, we'll get better at giving her a bath so she'll enjoy it better. We did manage to get a couple of pictures before she started crying!

So, we have finally jumped on the band wagon and have started a blog! I used to say that I didn't have anything worth blogging about, but now we do! Our little family of 2 is now a family of 3. Our Baby Girl joined our family on September 11. She was so excited to be apart of our family that she came 5 weeks early! She weighed 6 pounds 7 ounces and was 18 1/2 inches long. When we went for her 2 week check up - she weighed 6 lb. 12 oz. and was 20 inches long! She is growing! So, now for the sake of first time grandparents and close friends, I'll attempt to keep an up to date blog.

We hope you enjoy our blog! This website is Morgan's creation. Isn't it impressive?

This is the first entry and it's kind of a test just to see how things will look. We wanted to start this because of our little girl and so that family and friends could read and see pictures of her. So there is one posted. Please enjoy.

Baby Girl is doing very well, she is gaining weight and is doing a wonderful job sleeping at night. She just had her two week appointment with the pediatrician and so far so good.

In the future there will be a way for friends and family to post comments, pictures, ect on this site; however, I'll have to find the time to do that